A paper submitted by a Taiwanese academic to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s scientific journal in July said that the H6N1 strain of avian influenza is continuing to mutate in Taiwan, with dogs now also susceptible to the virus.
National Taiwan University school of veterinary science professor Wang Ching-ho (王金和) wrote that he learned last year that canines have contracted the H6N1 bird flu strain, adding that after further research he found that roughly 2.1 percent of canines in Taiwan have been infected.
In an interview with Chinese-language newspaper the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times), Wang said he came across the first case several years ago when examining a dog’s temperament. He and fellow researchers discovered that the dog was infected with H6N1 after conducting virus isolation procedures.
Wang said it is possible that certain biological similarities between canines and birds make them susceptible to the virus.
The strain of H6N1 in Taiwan has not only infected dogs, but has also become the first known case world-wide to infect humans, Wang said. Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control discovered in May that a 20-year-old female dog in Nantou County had also become infected with the virus.
When asked why he had not informed the government in May about dogs being suspected carriers of the H6N1 viral strain, Wang said it was not a disease mandated by the World Organization for Animal Health that had to be reported.
However, Wang said that he had mentioned the report several years ago during a seminar at National Taiwan University, adding that he had also sent an e-mail to the Council of Agriculture about the issue.
In response, Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine director-general Chang Su-san (張淑賢) said that while the case of a dog being infected by H6N1 was the first in Taiwan, the viral strain has a 40-year history here.
The bureau did not need to be informed of the case, as it was a common and low-pathogenic virus often seen on chicken farms, she said, adding the bureau did not place great emphasis on the report.
Unsatisfied with the response, freelance journalist Lee Hui-jen (李惠仁), who spent more than six years investigating avian influenza in Taiwan and directed the documentary A Secret that Can’t be Exposed (不能戳的秘密) said the bureau’s inaction was indirectly escalating the danger the endemic H6N1 strain posed to the nation.
A mild avian influenza outbreak earlier this year included allegedly highly pathogenic bird flu strains, the H5N8 strain and a new H5N2 strain, Lee said, adding that virus strains are starting to mutate in Taiwan, but that the bureau was not paying any attention to it.
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