Friday, March 03, 2017

OIE Notification: HPAI H5N6 In Greece

Credit OIE















#12,281


We've a report from the OIE this afternoon (h/t Lisa Schnirring) that an outbreak of HPAI H5 reported last month in Greece was misidentified as H5N8, when it was in fact HPAI H5N6.   This is, as far as I know, the first HPAI H5N6 reported in Europe.

What isn't clear from this report is whether this is a local reassortment - such as we've seen previously from H5N8 (generating H5N5 in Europe & H5N2 in North America) - or if this is the first arrival of  the Asian H5N6 virus, which has been spreading across China, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. 

Either scenario raises interesting questions, but we'll apparently have to wait for clarification. In the meantime, everything we know right now is contained in the following OIE Report: