Examine, a free weekly newsletter covering science with a sceptical, evidence-based eye, is sent every Tuesday. Below is an excerpt – sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox.
Hendra virus is Australia’s home-grown zoonosis. The virus, which has only been found in Australia, can spread from flying foxes to horses and then – fatally – into people. It has killed four people since it was first spotted in humans in 1994, although it has been around a lot longer than that.
The Hendra virus can be found in horses, but there is a vaccine.Credit:AFP
The last human death was in 2009. An effective vaccine for horses exists, but many horse owners in high-risk areas, put off by the cost and worried about its effects on racing performance, don’t get it. And vets typically watch for it only in Queensland and northern NSW.
Several new pieces of evidence suggest we shouldn’t be so complacent. Hendra appears more widespread than we think – and something is causing a dramatic change in the way our flying foxes behave.
In 2015, a 12-year-old Arabian gelding on a farm in south-eastern Queensland fell suddenly ill. A vet called to the stable watched the gelding twitch and shake and repeatedly push his head into the wall. Soon his nose was filling with mucus and he was struggling to breathe; he soon collapsed.
The horse had all the signs of Hendra, and lived in a high-risk area. But tests for the virus came back negative, just like they do most of the time when vets test for the virus.
“It just reaches a point where the system flips ... A threshold may have been crossed.”
Horses die from mysterious illnesses often – usually it gets chalked up to snakebite. The horse was buried. Life moved on.
Not for the Westmead Institute’s Dr John-Sebastian Eden and his team of virus hunters, though. They saw a murder-mystery.
From flying foxes to horses, virus hunters fear Hendra cases might be missed
Examine, a free weekly newsletter covering science with a sceptical, evidence-based eye, is sent every Tuesday. Below is an excerpt – sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox.
Hendra virus is Australia’s home-grown zoonosis. The virus, which has only been found in Australia, can spread from flying foxes to horses and then – fatally – into people. It has killed four people since it was first spotted in humans in 1994, although it has........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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