The 3rd Webinar for the Wildlife Health Network in Europe was held online the 28 of October 2024 at 11:00 CET.
The webinar highlighted advancements in predicting and mitigating highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) through two monitoring tools, DiFLUsion and the Bird Flu Radar.
Irene Iglesias Martín, animal health research at the Center CISA-INIA (CSIC), delivered a prerecorded presentation detailing the description of the model applied for DiFLUsion tool and the global HPAI situation. She emphasized the virus’s geographical distribution, host species, evolving dynamics, seasonal shifts, and impacts on conservation, including mammalian spillover events. The need for long-term surveillance of avian influenza across wild birds, mammals, poultry, and humans, adhering to a One Health approach, was underlined. Additionally, gaps in understanding the influenza virus dynamics in wild birds were highlighted.
Germán Cáceres Garrido, Wildlife Focal Point from Spain/ Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA), presented on HPAI’s epidemiological trends in the EU and Spain (2021–2024). He detailed DiFLUsion’s integration into Spain’s HPAI risk-based surveillance and prevention framework. DiFLUsion, operational since 2021, is a real-time spatiotemporal early alert system aimed at risk-monitoring and preventing, through data-driven models, HPAI introduction in Spain through migratory birds. It integrates wild birds outbreak data from WOAH’s reporting system (WAHIS), wild bird migratory patterns, and climatic conditions, to provide weekly risk alerts, visualized on maps, to guide surveillance and risk communication as well as decision-making on confinement and biosecurity decisions.
Lisa Kohnle, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), presented the Bird Flu Radar, a spatiotemporal early warning tool integrated into EFSA’s HPAI surveillance system, operational since 2023. The tool provides weekly risk assessments for HPAI introduction and establishment in wild bird populations in Europe. Utilizing data from a consortium of ornithological organizations, it incorporates abundance and movement patterns of 12 wild bird species, representing 89% of ring recovery data in Europe. HPAI outbreak information is sourced from the EU Animal Disease Information System (ADIS), with risk modelling performed for each 50×50 km grid cell in Europe on a weekly basis. The Bird Flu Radar offers a publicly available online interface, updated with new predictions every Monday, and is available at https://app.bto.org/hpai. Interested users may sign up for weekly alert emails based on their country or region of interest. The system integrates data from citizen science contributions, environmental and climatic variables. Currently, a poultry risk assessment prototype for broader application is under development, and already available to stakeholders in France and Italy.
While effective, both tools face challenges, including the availability of important input data, limitations of the model performance outside the European region, challenges incorporating biosecurity and vaccination impacts, limited data updates on wild bird dynamics, and gaps in understanding HPAI transmission in different wild bird species. These tools, along with collaborative efforts, aim to strengthen global HPAI prevention and response.
Please find more info in the meeting report.
