A fifth case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Indiana has been confirmed.
A commercial flock of 35,908 turkeys in Dubois County, which had earlier been identified as a presumed-positive case of avian influenza has since been confirmed to have contracted a H5N1 variant of HPAI, according to information made available by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and the Indiana State Board of Animal Health (BOAH).
All turkeys in the flock have been depopulated.
This marks the third confirmation of HPAI in commercial turkey flock in Dubois County in 2022. The two earlier cases were confirmed on February 8 and February 16, and contained 29,000 and 26,473 turkeys, respectively.
One February 23, one day prior to the confirmation of HPAI’s presence in the third Dubois County flock, two earlier presumed-positive cases of HPAI in Greene County turkey flocks were confirmed. The Greene County flocks included 48,000 and 15,400 turkeys.
In addition to the five cases of HPAI in Indiana, there have also been confirmed cases of HPAI in commercial poultry in Kentucky and Delaware.
Those cases included a flock of 1,146,937 commercial laying hens in New Castle County, Delaware; a flock of 246,000 commercial broilers in Fulton County, Kentucky, and a flock of 54,600 commercial turkeys in Webster County, Kentucky.
To date, the only other commercial poultry flock in North America to have a confirmed case of HPAI was a commercial turkey flock in Nova Scotia, Canada. The first appearance of HPAI in North America this winter occurred at an exhibition farm in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. That case was confirmed in December 2021.
HPAI cases have also been reported in poultry this year in the continents of Africa, Europe and Asia.
View our continuing coverage of the global avian influenza situation.