Cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) continue to be problematic in one municipality in Quebec.
According to a report from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), another case of HPAI in a commercial poultry flock in Quebec’s Rouville Regional County Municipality was confirmed on April 4.
This is the same municipality where the province’s three most recent cases were confirmed. Two of those were confirmed on April 3, while the oldest of those was confirmed March 27.
CFIA did not disclose the type of poultry flock that were affected in these most recent cases, nor did it report how many birds were in the affected operations.
Outside of the four Rouville flocks, the last time a commercial flock in Canada was affected by HPAI was on March 14, with that incident being confirmed in West Lincoln Township, Ontario.
So far in the 2022-23 HPAI outbreak, Rouville has had seven flocks struck by the virus, while Quebec has had 28 commercial poultry flocks affected. Twelve of those cases in Quebec were confirmed in 2023.
The province’s first instance of HPAI during the present outbreak was confirmed on April 12, 2022, in the La Val-Saint-Francois Regional County Municipality.
To date, only two Canadian provinces have had more HPAI cases than Quebec during the 2022-23 outbreak. British Columbia has had 77, while Alberta has had 38.
All provinces in Canada have had confirmed cases of HPAI in either commercial or backyard poultry except for Prince Edward Island, but Prince Edward Island has had confirmed cases of HPAI in wild birds. No poultry in the Canadian territories has been affected by HPAI, but all territories have had confirmed cases in wild birds.
More recently, CFIA and the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease (NCFAD), a dog in Oshawa, Ontario, tested positive for HPAI on April 1, which to date is the only case of its kind in the country.
To learn more about HPAI cases in commercial poultry flocks in the United States and Canada, see an interactive map on WATTPoultry.com.
Read our ongoing coverage of the global avian influenza outbreak.
