Rare Bird Flu Detected in Eagle and Eider Duck

Samples taken from a white-tailed eagle found dead on a skerry near Barðaströnd in the Westfjords in mid-September tested positive for a severe bird flu virus of the strain HPAI H4N5. An eider duck that was found dead in Ólafsfjörður, West Iceland recently was infected with the same strain of bird flu virus. The strain has not been detected in Iceland before and is not common.

Andy Ramey with USGS writes:

I believe that there is a typo in this news story which is included in the highlighted text in this post. That is, I strongly suspect that this detection was of a H5N5 avian influenza virus, not H4N5. Reference to H5N5 is made in the second part of the article as well as what was indicated on the official notice put out by the World Organization for Animal Health (https://wahis.woah.org/#/in-review/5254). To date, all avian influenza viruses that have been determined to be highly pathogenic among chickens and turkeys (and sometimes wild birds) have either been of the H5 or H7 subtype (e.g., not H4).