00:02Gearing up to protect a beloved species, vaccinating Phillip Island's little penguins against the deadly bird flu,
00:10coinciding with a troubling but not unexpected development, a long-nosed fur seal found with the virus in South Australia.
00:18This is sadly our first confirmed case of the H5 bird flu in a mammal in Australia.
00:23The seal was found in the limestone coast town of Beechport, about 300 kilometres south of Adelaide,
00:30and likely caught the disease from local birds already hit by the virus.
00:34Sadly, we also know that once the H5 bird flu is spreading in the natural environment, it is not possible
00:40to avoid significant losses.
00:42Significant losses have already been seen in the remote Australian territory of Herd Island,
00:47where more than 13,000 southern elephant seal pups succumbed to the disease.
00:51We know from what's happened in South America and in the sub-Antarctic,
00:56that pretty much once we start seeing avian-to-mammal transmission, that that will continue,
01:01and then it is likely that we'll see mammal-to-mammal transmission as well.
01:04We only have this one isolated case at this point in time, no evidence of mass mortalities in seals,
01:09but if I had to guess, I would guess we will get more cases.
01:13I don't know when, I don't know how many, but I would consider them to be the mammals most at
01:18risk.
01:18Fears it could spread to endangered Australian sea lions on Kangaroo Island,
01:23where South Australia's first case in a little penguin has also been detected,
01:27a region where hundreds of birds died in the nation's first mass mortality events.
01:32While there is a vaccine available for birds, like the little penguins on Phillip Island,
01:37a vaccine for mammals is still only in the experimental phase.
01:40Obviously talking to the researchers in the US, but also with our federal counterparts,
01:44to one, try and get access to that vaccine, but also assess the science.
01:48There's still no suggestion the disease has spread to the poultry or agriculture industries.
Comments