Asymptomatic bird flu-infected poultry

Clinical signs of bird flu range from respiratory distress to coughing and sneezing, to dead chickens. If no clinical signs can be observed – asymptomatic chickens – the risks of the virus spreading are much higher, which also means that humans can become more easily infected with bird flu due to the virus’s ability to adapt to new environments and hosts.

Indonesia needs to be particularly cautious, as this is the country with the highest death toll from the disease, killing 79 people in total.

“The poultry death rate is not so high, but there is a trend that chicken or poultry are infected by the virus but they don’t die,” says Musny Suatmodjo, director of animal health.

While bird flu is essentially a poultry disease, scientists are worried about the. They fear this increases the chances of the virus mutating into a form that can jump easily between people, triggering a pandemic.

“There are some cases where humans were infected with the virus although there was no sick or dead poultry in their surroundings. But it can’t be a general conclusion yet,” said Bayu Krisnamurthi, the bird flu commission chief.

Hong Kong-based researchers have also detected such “asymptomatic” chickens and other poultry in mainland Chinese markets in recent years, which they believe were responsible for most of the H5N1 human infections there.