14 DAY TRIAL // The first case of mammal infection with the H5N1 virus in Europe was found in a cat in the north side of Germany. The cat was discovered dead during the past weekend, in an area where over 100 wild birds were also infected, and it is believed to have eaten an infected bird.
Officials demanded cat owners to keep their pet indoors, stressing on the fact that the present case is no danger to people, since there is no known transmission of the virus from cat to human, but a cat to cat transmission is very likely to happen. In Thailand, tigers and leopards in a zoo were infected in 2003 with the virus after being fed chickens.
Maria Cheng, from the World Health Organization, stated: "We don't know what this means for humans. We don't know if they would play a role in transmitting the disease. We don't know how much virus the cats would excrete, how much people would need to be exposed to before they would fall ill."
Scientists are also concerned about the virus being transmitted to pigs. "We're particularly worried about pigs because they can have both human and bird flu at the same time and they can pass it on back to humans in a new form, which is essentially what happened in the last two pandemics," Cheng said.
Also, the deaths of several birds in the southern Bahamas Island of Inagua are investigated for the H5N1 strain.