Dozens of vulture carcasses, left decomposing for days outside a Catholic school in Ohio while agencies pointed fingers over who was responsible for cleaning them up, were believed to have been infected with bird flu, health officials said on Monday.
At least two of the 72 carcasses have tested positive for bird flu amid a resurgence of the virus, according to Clermont County Public Health. The risk to humans was low, the department said.
Additional testing was being conducted on the birds, all of which the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife said were presumed to have been infected with bird flu.
The disclosure came a week after the carcasses were found on Dec. 1 on the athletic fields at Saint Bernadette School in Pierce Township, Ohio, about 20 miles southeast of Cincinnati. The school has more than 200 students enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade, and had just reopened after Thanksgiving break.
Township officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday, but told the Cincinnati television station WCPO that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources had initially spurned their request for help removing the dead birds and testing them.
“They were very adamant that they were not coming,” Allen Freeman, a township trustee, told the station. “There was a recommendation that you just take them, put them in a bag, double-bag them and throw them in the garbage.”
The state agency said in a statement that while it provides technical guidance on how to deal with dead wildlife, it was not responsible for their removal.
“Although the division does not typically collect dead wildlife, we worked with local officials to assist in the collection of the dead birds at the school for this unique circumstance,” the statement said.
Once a presumed positive case of bird flu is identified in a county, all additional dead birds found in groups of six or more are also presumed to have the virus, according to the department. It referred questions about the risks of human exposure to the Ohio Department of Health.
State and county health officials did not immediately answer questions on Tuesday about whether anyone who might have had contact with the dead vultures had been tested for bird flu.
Saint Bernadette School also did not respond to a request for comment.
The Ohio Department of Agriculture sent samples from two of the infected birds to a lab in Iowa for additional testing, a spokesman for the office said on Tuesday.
Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University, said in an interview on Tuesday that scavengers like vultures tend to be much more susceptible to bird flu than migratory birds because they feed on dead animals.
“Hopefully, nobody is touching these animals,” Dr. Lakdawala said.
The large die-off of vultures in Ohio coincided with a rise in cases of bird flu, which has caused the deaths of millions of farmed birds in the United States since the beginning of September. The virus often flares up in the fall as birds migrate south.
Dr. Lakdawala said that it was important to follow up with people who might have had contact with the birds and test them for the illness, which she said can cause conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye, and mild respiratory symptoms. The incubation time is around two to four days from exposure to infection, she said.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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