H5N8 and H5N1 Related: NTU Professor Chin Chuan-chun Urges Assessment of Human Transmission Risk
It has now been 12 days since the outbreak of the old-type H5N2 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus at a laying hen farm in Dawu Mountain, Pingtung, on January 9. Since then, poultry farms across the country, including those raising chickens, ducks and geese, have seen successive outbreaks of different highly pathogenic avian influenza subtypes such as H5N8, the new-type H5N2 and the new-type H5N3. So far the epidemic is still raging, which is worrying. Although the virus types differ, when it comes to the source of the virus, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine of the Council of Agriculture and poultry scholars have relied only on the analysis results of HA and NA to attribute the virus to migratory birds bringing it in from abroad and then transmitting it to poultry. However, given that this outbreak has spread across both open and closed housing environments, and that different avian influenza virus subtypes broke out simultaneously within a short period, yet the source of infection is attributed entirely to migratory birds, the relevant scientific evidence appears weak.
If the possible source of the virus is to be clarified as quickly as possible, publishing all 8 gene segments of the avian influenza virus will help determine where these virus strains may have come from, which subtypes of avian influenza viruses they reassorted from, how pathogenic they are to poultry, and their capacity for cross-species transmission, and even allow assessment of the risk that the virus, after mutation, may evolve into avian-to-human transmission in the future. Therefore, analyzing and disclosing all 8 gene segments of the virus will help the poultry industry and public health authorities formulate disease prevention and control strategies.
To this end, a NewsMarket reporter conducted an exclusive interview with Jin Chuan-chun, a professor at the Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, who is renowned in domestic epidemiology, to analyze this wave of avian influenza, the most disastrous outbreak in Taiwan's history, presented in the first person:
