Delaware Deploys 80 Sentinel Chickens to Track West Nile as US Cases Rise Early
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Sep 12
Delaware Deploys 80 Sentinel Chickens to Track West Nile as US Cases Rise Early
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Sep 12
Summary
Delaware stations flocks of four chickens at 20 sites statewide to detect West Nile and Eastern equine encephalitis before human cases emerge, after the CDC warned of the earliest early-summer West Nile activity since 2004.
The birds act as dead-end hosts that develop antibodies about a week after infected mosquito bites, giving officials precise location data to target spraying, alert doctors and prompt horse vaccinations.
Delaware kept the chicken-only system after trying mosquito-pool testing, saying the stationary birds sometimes catch local virus activity the flying insects miss.
Data collected since the early 1980s are also feeding models that link virus seasons to temperature, precipitation, landscape and bird migration, with researchers using those records to improve forecasts of severe outbreaks.