H5 bird flu has been confirmed in Tasmania for the first time, in a wild brown skua found near Rocky Cape on the state's north west coast. It is the sixth Australian state to record the virus, and the last one that had not.
Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania found the bird through its surveillance program. Samples have gone to the CSIRO Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness at Geelong for confirmatory testing and subtyping, the same laboratory that has handled every Australian detection since the virus arrived in June. The department said there had been no detections in poultry in Tasmania and no evidence of deaths in other species at the site.
Surveillance will be extended around Rocky Cape and out to King Island and Flinders Island.
The first bird found on the Australian mainland was also a brown skua, at Cape Le Grand National Park near Esperance in Western Australia in mid June.
The national count changed this week, and the way it changed is worth noting. As at 8pm on Tuesday, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry reported 236 confirmed detections of H5 in wild birds. From Wednesday the department switched to counting events rather than individual birds, where a single event may involve one bird or many. The figure published as at 4pm on Thursday was 186 events: 123 in South Australia, 48 in Victoria, 10 in Western Australia, four in New South Wales and one in Queensland. Tasmania is not yet in that breakdown.
Nothing recovered between Tuesday and Thursday. The number fell because the unit of measurement changed.
The department's stated reason is workload. As the virus is confirmed in more locations and more species, it says it will no longer be necessary to test every bird in an investigation or every species in an area where transmission is already established, and that reporting will be targeted at the national picture and key developments instead.
The effect is a break in the published series. The department has not released a back series converting the earlier detection counts into events, so this week's national figure and last week's are measuring different things.
On 8 August the count stood at 215 detections, with 147 of those in South Australia. On 3 August, when Environment Minister Murray Watt and Agriculture Minister Julie Collins confirmed the first mass death event in Australian wildlife at Baudin Rocks off Robe, it was 74.
There have still been no detections in poultry or anywhere else in the agricultural production system, which is the line the national response was built to hold. Authorities continue to rate the risk to human health as low.
Sick or dead wild birds should not be touched or approached. Multiple sick or dead birds can be reported to the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline on 1800 675 888, which operates 24 hours.
