After a 10-day period with no new cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in commercial poultry in the United States, the virus has resurfaced in the same county where it was last detected.
According to information on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) website, HPAI was confirmed on June 2 in a commercial meat ducks in Berks County, Pennsylvania. There were 31,000 ducks in the most recently confirmed case.
Prior to this case, the last case of HPAI in a commercial U.S. poultry flock also occurred in Berks County. In that case, in which the presence of HPAI was confirmed on May 23, a flock of 4,700 breeder ducks was affected.
During the period between the two Berks County cases, the only positive HPAI cases reported by APHIS have involved backyard flocks. Among those are four cases in Washington and one case each in Georgia, Idaho and Minnesota. While this has not yet been reported from APHIS, the Indiana State Board of Animal Health (BOAH), in an email to WATT Global Media, stated that there is a presumed positive case in a small mixed species flock in Allen County.
HPAI detections in backyard flocks, in accordance with standards set forth by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), should not have an impact on international poultry trade.
So far in 2022, HPAI has been confirmed in commercial poultry in the following states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, Colorado, North Carolina, Delaware, Maryland and Utah. The virus has also been found in commercial game bird operations in Texas, New York and South Dakota.
To learn more about HPAI cases in North American commercial poultry flocks, see an interactive map on WATTPoultry.com.
Read our ongoing coverage of the global avian influenza outbreak.
