#19,247
Overnight Western Australia has confirmed an 8th H5N1 detection in a bird (petrel), found at Lancelin Beach (70 km North of Perth), and are awaiting confirmation from CSIRO on an additional a dead giant petrel, found on WA South Coast.This brings the nation's total to 14 confirmed.
New bird flu cases at Lancelin and Denmark
Media release
Western Australia has recorded a new positive detection of H5 bird flu in a migratory seabird at Lancelin bringing the State’s total to eight confirmed cases.
Last updated: 15 July 2026
Western Australia has recorded a new positive detection of H5 bird flu in a migratory seabird at Lancelin bringing the State's total to eight confirmed cases.
Testing at the CSIRO's Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness this week confirmed the 'presumed positive' detection in a dead giant petrel, found at Lancelin Beach, north of Perth.
While testing was unable to fully determine the specific H5 bird flu strain, likely due to the sample quality from a decomposed carcass, it will be treated as a positive case.
On the WA South Coast, a dead giant petrel found at Parry Beach in Denmark has also tested positive for the H5 strain.
In this case, additional testing by CSIRO to confirm the H5 bird flu strain has not been finalised and may also not be possible due to carcass degradation. It is likely to be treated as a presumed positive detection.
Both cases were reported by members of the public to the Emergency Animal Disease (EAD) Hotline for further investigation.
There have been more than 1700 wildlife-related reports from WA to the hotline since the first confirmed case on 19 June. Of these reports, 283 have been assessed for further investigation or testing based on the likelihood of disease risk.
To date, a total of 117 negative test results have been recorded across the State.
The risk to human health remains low, but people are reminded to avoid handling the animals, record their observations by photo or video and report to the EAD hotline on 1800 675 888.
More information is available on the Australian Government's Bird flu (Avian influenza) website.
The logistics of following up each prioritized hotline report of dead birds are both extensive and time consuming:
- Physically collecting and preserving carcasses (assuming they haven't been degraded by exposure or predation), often from remote regions.
- Preliminary tests are run by local/state agricultural institutes to quickly confirm the presence the H5 subtype
- Followed by packaging and sending biological samples to the only national testing laboratory (CSIRO Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) in Geelong, Victoria)
- Upon arrival, confirmation (and full sequencing) can take several days, assuming the sample had not degraded too badly.
While I've only seen aggregate totals posted by WA, it is apparent that the number of daily reports to their hotline far exceeds their ability to collect and test samples.
Over the past 12 days the number of tested samples has risen from 63 to 125 (avg 5/day), while the number of hotline reports has grown by 900 (avg 75/day). Even if we limit it to prioritized reports, that number has averaged 13.75/day.
Although testing has increased over the past 12 days, the number of new reports of sick or dead birds far outpaces those gains.
None of this is a criticism of Australia's response, only an acknowledgment of the enormity of the problem facing them. No surveillance and testing program can hope to capture more than a fraction of the HPAI activity in birds or animals in the wild.
What testing can do is give us an idea as to the spread, intensity, and host range of HPAI H5 across the continent. And sequencing can alert us to any reassortments or significant changes to the virus over time.
While the absolute number of confirmed detections remains small (n=14) - and we've seen no reports of outbreaks in poultry or mammalian wildlife - the trends are nevertheless concerning.
