Canada Posts Chickens As Sentries For Deadly Virus...05/18/00

LONDON, (Reuters) - Canadian health authorities are stationing chickens along 2,500 km (1,550 miles) of the border with the United States to detect the deadly West Nile virus, New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

The virus, which mainly infects birds and is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes, killed seven people and made 46 others ill when it struck New York last year.

"We are going to be putting out sentinel chicken coops from Saskatchewan to Atlantic Canada," Harvey Artsob, the chief of zoonotic diseases at Health Canada's Laboratory Centre for Disease Control in Ottawa, told the magazine.

New York has spent an estimated $10 million on controlling mosquitoes that can spread the virus. There have been no new infections since last summer but Canada is taking no chances.

Experts suspect the virus was brought into New York by an exotic bird.

Canadian officials plan to test the chickens once a week to determine whether they have the virus.

"Dead birds found in the wild will also be tested," the magazine said.