The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has discovered avian flu in several species of mammals, including skunks, foxes and raccoons.
Dairy cows in Texas tested positive for this strain of flu a little more than a year ago. Since then, it's passed between livestock and even to humans. The flu's presence in wild mammals represents a new stage of its spread.
Hunter Reed, senior wildlife veterinarian for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, spoke to the Texas Standard about the development.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: So were these animals clearly exhibiting symptoms of avian flu?
Hunter Reed: Yeah, so some of these animals are showing neurological signs, looking disoriented. Some of them even have crusty eyes. Some are exhibiting signs of discharge coming from the nose and eyes.
So these are types of signs that are not unusual to see with like a viral infection. So when these animals also, because it's a collaboration with DSHS [the Department of State Health Services], we also are concerned about rabies at the same time. So, these animals were submitted for rabies testing.
They came back not detected, and then they were subjected to a couple other tests, distemper being one of them, but then also HPAI [highly pathogenic avian influenza], because this is something that has popped up in other parts of the country, probably to a greater extent. So, through that screening and collaboration with DSHS, that's how these animals became detected.
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Now, you mentioned the Panhandle. Is it isolated there for now? Or do we have reason to believe that it could be happening in other parts of Texas?
From what we know, the disease itself, HPAI, is all across the United States. What we're seeing right now is we have detections in hawks, vultures, geese, ducks, all sorts of avian species across the state, but at least in this instance, we saw a very isolated event up in the Panhandle where several of them popped positive.
This is to say that there could very likely be infections in mammals across the other parts of the state. And this just might be an incidence where we had very good surveillance and very good cooperation with the local county that we're able to detect this.
But our department along with DSHS are looking to try and expand this collaboration a little bit, look in other areas of the state where we've seen HPAI pop up and see if we can broaden a little bit of surveillance on mammals just to gain a little more information about: Is this disease out there? Is it infecting animals? And what types of strains might be circulating in Texas?
Depending on how the strain changes and infects a different animal, it could be a more direct threat to humans. Is that part of the concern?
There's been recent cases, I think the most recent being in Mexico, where unfortunately someone had severe disease and died from the disease. So our main concern here is it's not just the animal welfare, but it's also human welfare.
But what we've seen throughout the United States is that these HPAIs, it's a fluid virus. So, through time as it gets exposed to different strains, it can adapt and change over time.
And currently, the risk of transmission to humans is low. But we want to be able to have good surveillance on strains just to make sure that if anything changes, that we can respond quickly and efficiently.
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I guess is your message to Texans, too, that this is part of something that they should keep an eye out for in pets and in animals near them, and are veterinarians across the state on alert for this as well?
Yeah, certainly. So for private veterinarians, this might not be something that's traditionally been on their radar. I think it increasingly has, but it's certainly something that they should keep an eye out for.
Additionally, for folks, whether you're a rancher in Central Texas seeing animals on your own property, or someone in urban Austin, being sure that if you have incidences of animals showing neurological signs or acting abnormally, that you can reach out to the appropriate regulatory bodies.
So reporting to any of us will probably make its way to each agency as we work to collaborate and communicate together, especially because this is a disease that can really cross all of those regulatory boundaries.
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