Thousands of dead or euthanized birds, hundreds of farms in quarantine and canceled exports is the preliminary assessment of avian influenza spreading in Latin America, while the authorities redouble their efforts to mitigate its impact.
Since the first cases were reported in October 2022, numerous countries have detected sick animals, including Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina.
So far Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Paraguay are on the short list of countries with no reported cases, but they remain under animal health alert and extreme surveillance.
The disease arrived in the region via migratory birds and has spread inexorably from north to south and west to east.
The outbreak killed wild birds but also sea lions and spread to backyard birds (for family consumption) and poultry.
canceled exports
“This is the first time that cases of avian influenza have appeared in backyard and commercial birds in Argentina,” Víctor Manuel Baldovino Prina, director of the southern regional center of the Buenos Aires province of the National Health and Quality Service, told AFP. Agrifood (Senasa).
Since the first case was reported on a farm in early March, Argentina has suspended the export of poultry products, although without affecting the domestic market since the disease is not transmitted to humans through consumption of chicken meat or eggs.
Some 240,000 chickens died or were slaughtered on Argentine farms. “Migratory birds are the ones that bring this type of virus through two currents, one from the Atlantic and the other from the Pacific,” explained the expert.
In Argentina there are no approved vaccines against this disease, but health authorities and representatives of business chambers “are working with laboratories to have vaccines” in the short term, Prina said.
Slaughter and vaccination
Mexico reported the first case on October 14 and since then has confirmed outbreaks in 12 of the country’s 32 states, where quarantines were issued and vaccines are applied to stop the spread of the disease, which has a high impact on poultry production.
Up to the beginning of February, outbreaks had been confirmed in 50 farms in the country, where 5.9 million birds were infected, equivalent to almost 0.3% of the national inventory, reported the Ministry of Agriculture.
Ecuador has been under alert since November 27 when it detected the virus in poultry and backyards.
Authorities even reported the infection of a nine-year-old girl in the province of Bolívar (center).
Some 35 farms are part of the first stage of vaccination, with more than 750,000 animals reached in Ecuador.
Eradication measures included the slaughter of almost 300,000 animals.
Peru declared a health alert for six months in November. The outbreak affects not only birds but also sea lions.
On March 6, the Peruvian authorities reported that the flu could have killed 3,487 sea lions living in protected areas.
63,000 birds killed by bird flu were also reported between November 2022 and March of this year.
Although Peru has not reported cases of infected humans, the authorities urged the population to “avoid any contact with sea lions and seabirds.”
“We suspect that the species that is transmitting this virus is the Franklin gull,” which migrates from the north of the continent, warned Peru’s National Agrarian Health Service.
Panama sacrificed some 1,500 poultry and prohibited for 90 days the movement of backyard specimens, fertile eggs and ornamental birds.
Chile reported this week the first case in poultry in a breeding center with 40,000 birds in Rancagua (south). It had already detected the virus in wild birds, sea lions and otters in the regions of Arica (on the border with Peru) and Los Lagos (1,000km south of Santiago).
Venezuela detected cases only in wild birds, however, it imposed a ban on the transfer of live birds of all kinds and fertile eggs.
Cuba reported cases in wild birds at a Havana zoo on February 7, after which it ordered the closure of the place and a preventive quarantine, without any other suspected cases having been reported on the island.
Honduras declared an emergency on February 15 after recording some 300 dead pelicans on Caribbean beaches. Guatemala also detected pelicans dead from the disease in coastal villages.
Uruguay, meanwhile, declared a health emergency throughout the country due to the discovery of dead black-necked swans contaminated with the virus in lagoons in the eastern part of the country. Although it suspended bird sales fairs, the government restricted the mobility of commercial birds only to those controlled by the national Poultry Monitoring System.
Paraguay, among the countries free of the disease, considers its arrival inevitable. “We are really very concerned, the risk of their entry is imminent,” José Martín, president of Paraguay’s National Animal Health and Quality Service, told the press. “It is a reality that we have to manage in the region,” he added.
