Jack Gough

But I think what we can say is whether we're lucky this time or not, it's no longer theoretical that this H5 variety of bird flu will turn up.

It'll turn up at some point.

And when it does, the experience from overseas is devastation.

So it spread through the entire South American continent within six months back in 2023 and then skipped over to Antarctica.

The year before, about a 1% death rate for baby elephant seals went to a 95% death rate.

And yet tens of thousands...

of dead mammals.

We know that overseas it's been in the millions of birds that have been killed in the UK, for example, about a 30% loss of their breeding shorebirds.

Terraces of breeding guillemots, puffins,

Sandwich and roseate turns our rarest breeding species, and the bodies of the dead dot the island wherever you look.

And we can expect pretty serious devastation in Australia.

We don't know exactly how it will behave.

It's been a pretty interesting virus, I guess you could call it, in terms of the way that it behaves in different colonies being quite different.

But devastation seems to be absolutely the name of the game.

And

fast spreading as well, which means that it's a pretty concerning virus to have here.

Yeah, look, at the moment, there's no evidence that this is a serious risk to humans.

The government risk assessment is very low for humans.

We have seen just under 1,000 cases worldwide, and the death rate for humans who have caught it has been

around 50%.