H5N1 or Bird Flu is spreading from California to surrounding states. A wildlife sanctuary in Shelton, Washington State has been hit hard. Twenty big cats which is half the population at the sanctuary have died from the infections.
The cats were in 30 by forty foot habitat enclosures. Those habitats are spread put across 5 acres. In other words the big cats were not extremely close together. The first death happened around Thanksgiving. The sanctuary has been put under quarantine and the public had been denied access. They don’t not yet know how the cats were infected. Could it be bird droppings, or perhaps the meat they were fed? Could the virus be airborne? No one is certain yet. Among the cats that dies were, five African servals, four bobcats, four cougars, two Canada Lynxes, one Amur-Bengal tiger.
H5N1 has had a mortality rate of about 50% while COVID has a much smaller mortality rate of about 0.28% which resulted in over a million American deaths. If H5N1 starts human to human transmission, a 50% mortality rate would be devastating.