Page 6 - National Poultry Newspaper

Century old chicken disease could be key to controlling COVID-19 outbreaks
Australia regains
freedom from high
pathogenicity AI
ON February 26, 2021 following a significant response effort, Austral- ia has regained freedom from high pathogenicity avian influenza.
“The recent detections in Victorian poultry were all successfully eradicat- ed.”
distancing and move- ment restrictions, forcing services to operate virtu- ally and requiring a rapid uptake of new technol- ogy and procedures.
The outbreaks in Vic- toria were successfully eradicated and ongoing surveillance shows no further evidence of this disease in Australian poultry.
Three months have elapsed since disinfec- tion processes were completed and ongoing surveillance and trac- ing has not detected any further spread of avian influenza.
“It has been extremely pleasing to see the se- condment of government veterinarians from the Commonwealth to bol- ster the response capac- ity, along with on-going support in the field from private veterinary practi- tioners.
Minister for Agricul- ture, Drought and Emer- gency Management Da- vid Littleproud said this was testament to the dedication of all of those involved in the Victorian response.
As a result, Australia has now regained free- dom from high patho- genicity avian influenza in accordance with in- ternational guidelines published by the World Organisation for Animal Health.
“This is an excellent example of the coopera- tion that allows the ef- ficient and effective op- eration of animal health systems in Australia.”
“Avian influenza is a serious disease of poul- try and can cause high mortality in production birds,” he said.
“This is an important step in re-establishing export markets that have imposed restrictions on Australian poultry or poultry products and thus maintaining the competitiveness of Aus- tralian producers,” Min- ister Littleproud said.
The strains of low path- ogenicity avian influenza detected during the re- sponse have also been effectively resolved, with extensive testing show- ing no further evidence of any avian influenza virus in Victorian poul- try.
“We have a strong bios- ecurity system and meas- ures in place to manage the risk of animal dis- eases entering Australia from other countries.
“In implementing the response, Victoria has had to rise to unprec- edented operational chal- lenges.
The Australian Gov- ernment continues to work with states and territories and with in- dustry to raise awareness of avian influenza and contributes to programs to better understand the circulation of these vi- ruses in wild birds.
“We can rest assured that our biosecurity measures are effective – in this instance, it is believed a mild form of avian influenza that was circulating in wild birds had transferred to poultry and mutated.
“Perhaps the greatest challenge for the Vic- torian Government was managing the disease re- sponse while complying with COVID-19 social
ACCORDING to a Uni- versity of Melbourne aca- demic, the poultry indus- try could teach the world a great deal about the future of coronavirus infection control.
ny eyes, coughing, sneezing and quite often mortality in affected susceptible chick- ens.
“The two diseases have great similarities in terms of susceptibility to physical disinfection agents such as sanitisers that are available to us.
spray vaccination or drink- ing water vaccination — quite often before the birds are transferred to a produc- tion site.
Working in avian med- icine in the Asia Pacific Centre for Animal Health, Professor Amir Hadjinoor- mohammadi said infectious bronchitis virus found in chickens had many simi- larities to COVID-19.
“With a similar physical make-up, infectious bron- chitis virus presented with almost identical symptoms to COVID-19.
“Multiple attempts had been made to stamp out IBV and the poultry indus- try has tried hard to control the virus.
“Coronaviruses in general are very prone to changes in their genetic make-up – this occasionally causes the vi- rus to be different in terms of its biology and the way the vaccine can provide protection.”
“The learnings we ac- quire from working with animal diseases can be ap- plied to the way we control and diagnose diseases in humans,” Prof Hadjinoor- mohammadi said.
Infecting entire bird flocks in as little as 24 hours, IBV is present in most countries and spreads quickly between chickens.
“It’s a globally important virus, found in most every country with chickens, so there has been substantial effort over the past ninety years to come up with ef- fective vaccines.”
While coronavirus was first detected in chickens, the term was yet to be ap- plied to the disease.
However, IBV could spread through viral parti- cles and exposure to faecal matter, unlike what is cur- rently known of COVID-19.
The poultry industry had come up with different ways of vaccinating chick- ens.
Since the disease was re- ported in Australia in the 1960s, new viruses had emerged throughout the years.
“The disease was first reported in 1931 in Amer- ica, but there was suspicion that the disease was actu- ally present a decade earlier than that,” he said.
Multiple strains of IBV are present in the world’s chicken population, and that could be vital to future COVID-19 infection con- trol in humans.
“It’s very difficult to indi- vidually vaccinate the bird, but that is still done in sev- eral sectors of the industry,” Prof Hadjinoormohammadi said.
“In Australia, we have at least two different kinds of vaccines that are used,” Prof Hadjinoormohammadi said.
“The primary presenta- tion of the virus infection is respiratory illness.
“If you extrapolate what the poultry industry has learned with IBV, we’ll probably face the same situ- ation with SARS-COV-2,” Prof Hadjinoormohammadi said.
“Young chicks are of- ten mass vaccinated in the hatchery due to the diffi- culties.
“One of them is probably more common.
“It manifests as a runny nose, conjunctivitis or run-
“This typically involves a
“But every so often we have a new virus emerge, and we need to come up with a new strategy to tack- le that.”
“The name coronavirus was established later, but in the 1930s they actually de- termined the structure and shape of the virus.”
“They wanted to eradicate the disease, but soon they realised that it was impos- sible.
The mutating nature of IBV often required new vaccines to protect the birds, hence, the constant evolution of vaccines was probable in the fight against COVID-19 in humans.
Chicks are mass vaccinated for infectious bronchitis virus in the hatchery before being moved on farm.
SARS-CoV-2 has a similar physical structure and shape to infectious bronchitis virus.
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Page 6 – National Poultry Newspaper, March 2021
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