Europe has been experiencing the “most devastating” bird flu epidemic ever seen on its soil for more than a year, health officials said on Tuesday, with around 50 million poultry slaughtered in farms infected with the virus.
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Between October 2021 and September 2022, “Europe was hit by the most devastating outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), affecting 37 European countries and detecting more than 2,500 outbreaks on farms across the continent European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) , the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Union Reference Laboratory.
The losses of chickens, ducks or turkeys in the farms are in fact more significant, since this estimate of 50 million birds euthanized does not include the precautionary slaughter that could be carried out around the flock, the health agency told AFP.
The epidemic hasn’t abated since September, and contamination is doubling even as winter approaches.
EFSA points out that “for the first time” there was no clear separation between two epidemic waves because the virus had not disappeared in favor of the summer.
And this fall, the epidemic was already more virulent than last year, with a 35% higher number of infected farms.
Between September 10 and December 2, 2022, nearly 400 farm outbreaks were recorded in 18 European countries, led by France, the United Kingdom and Hungary.
The virus has also been detected more than 600 times in wild birds and particularly waterfowl (ducks, swans), which the report says may have contributed to the spread of the virus on farms.
At the request of the European Commission, EFSA is currently “assessing the availability of HPAI vaccines for poultry and examining possible vaccination strategies”.
The results of this work, eagerly awaited by breeders, will be known in the second half of 2023.