Overview
- South Australia recorded seven new suspected H5 cases on Monday and sent greater crested tern samples to the CSIRO Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong for confirmation and genomic sequencing.
- Queensland confirmed its first H5 detection on Saturday after a dead petrel found on Moreton Island tested positive at the CSIRO lab.
- There are about 20 confirmed or presumed H5 detections across Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, and all reported cases so far have been individual coastal wild seabirds.
- Authorities report no detections in poultry, no evidence of mass die-offs, and they describe the human health risk as low while state and federal agencies have escalated surveillance and urged industry vigilance.
- Conservationists warn the virus reaching native species during the breeding season could cause severe local impacts and raise the chance of spillover to farms, so officials will closely watch sequencing results and colony monitoring data.