Avian flu spreads in the EU faster than in 2023.

Avian flu spreads in the European Union faster than in 2023

This season, avian flu is spreading in the European Union faster than in 2023. This raises concerns that it may spread to humans. According to US News & World Report, the highly pathogenic avian flu, commonly referred to as bird flu, has claimed the lives of hundreds of millions of birds worldwide in recent years.

In the EU, the virus has not been found in humans or cattle, unlike in the US, where this year the virus spread to nearly 400 dairy herds across 14 states, and since April, it has been detected in 36 people. Four of them worked on a commercial egg farm infected with the virus.

Its spread to humans and other mammalian species, including dairy cattle and pigs in the US, raises concerns that the virus could mutate and easily transmit from human to human, triggering a pandemic.

According to the World Organisation for Animal Health, since the migration season began on August 1 and until the end of last week, there have been 62 outbreaks of avian flu on poultry farms in EU countries, mainly in the eastern part of the block.

Avian flu is a mass disease of wild birds and poultry caused by a virus that can be transmitted from a sick bird to humans. The disease has serious consequences for society worldwide and is part of WHO monitoring programs.

The avian flu virus belongs to the large group of various influenza A viruses that can infect humans, birds (turkeys, chickens, ducks), and animals (pigs, horses, ferrets, seals, and whales).

If the avian virus and the regular human influenza virus simultaneously enter a human body, a new strain emerges, acquiring the ability to cause a severe course of the disease and easily transmit from person to person, potentially causing a flu pandemic.

For comparison, during the same period in 2023, there were seven outbreaks of bird flu on EU farms, but this is still significantly less than the 112 outbreaks registered by the end of October 2022.

Recall that avian flu was detected in the Bila Tserkva district. This was reported by the press service of the main department of the State Food and Consumer Service in the Kyiv region. As noted, the virus could have been brought by migratory swans.