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GFMM desk: Four more outbreaks of bird flu have been reported in Poland, authorities said Friday (January 03, 2020), bringing the total number of Europe's largest poultry producers to six this week.
Outbreaks were confirmed in Wolka Orlowska and Olchowiec Kolonia, both in the Lubelskie region of Poland, a spokesman for the governor of the Lubelskie region said on Twitter.
Another outbreak of the H5N8 strain, released on Friday, was in the eastern Lubelskie area, about 500 meters from the farm where two Turkish cases were confirmed this week. Bird flu has not spread in Poland since the 2017.
An outbreak of the H5N8 strain was also confirmed on a chicken farm in Przygodzice, in the western Wielkopolskie region, Poland’s General Veterinary Inspectorate said in a statement.
On Friday, regional veterinary officer Pawel Piotrowski said it was estimated that 60,000 birds would be gassed in the Lubelskie area. He also said that the flu had already resulted in 40000 deaths.
He said that about 100,000 birds could be infected in Lubelskie and that there was a high risk of spreading the virus to the region as there were many poultry farms together.
“The area has been secured against people coming in who shouldn’t be there... we are focusing on cleaning the enclosures where birds have been affected,” he said.
Local authorities said in a statement on Tuesday that the virus is a subtype of high pathogenic H5N8 bird flu that can also pose a risk to humans.
H5N8 is a subtype of the Influenza A virus (sometimes called bird flu virus). Although H5N8 is considered one of the less pathogenic subtypes for humans, it is beginning to become more pathogenic. H5N8 has previously been used in place of the highly pathogenic H1N1 in studies.
Source: Online/SZK
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