Environment Minister Murray Watt has said a second bird appears to have tested positive for the highly infectious H5 bird flu, after the disease arrived on Australian shores last week.
“This is not an unexpected development. As disappointing as it is, we are the only continent in the world that has not yet had this most deadly strain of bird flu, and that’s why, for the last two years, we’ve been intensively preparing for this to make sure that we’ve got our systems in place,” Watt told the ABC this morning.
“In terms of the geographic spread, it’s important to remember that at this point we only have one officially confirmed case of the deadly strain, and that involved a bird that was found around Esperance on the southern coast of Western Australia. Of course, there is a second bird that looks like it has tested positive, but we’re waiting for official confirmation of that to come through,” he said.
Watt said there was no evidence of a “widespread outbreak”, but he encouraged Australians to continue reporting sightings of dead birds, saying: “What we want people to do [is] report any suspicious deaths, particularly of birds or mammals. But at this point, there’s no need for alarm that this has become a more widespread incident beyond those two birds.”
The minister said the government has held meetings with stakeholders in the agricultural sector, including in the chicken meat and egg sectors, and that Labor was taking the risk of the disease’s impact on industry seriously.
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