USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has added four new outbreaks of high-path avian flu to its growing list.

All were in commercial turkeys and confirmed officially on 20 April:

• Cottonwood county, Minnesota: 30,000 birds
• Wadena county, Minnesota: 301,000 birds
• Kandiyohi county, Minnesota: 61,000 birds and
• Spink county, South Dakota: 33,300 birds.

All these were in the area of the Mississippi flyway for migrating wild birds.

APHIS has revised downwards the number of commercial chickens involved in the outbreak in Osceola county, Iowa, which was also confirmed on 20 April: the figure is now 3.8 million birds*.

Overview

• The latest cases bring the total number of high-path avian flu outbreaks since December 2014 to 58.
• Outbreaks have occurred in poultry in 13 states.
• Three of the early outbreaks were caused by the H5N8 sub-type of the virus but in all those since mid-February 2015, the H5N2 variant has been confirmed.
• The majority of outbreaks have been in commercial turkeys (44); three have been in commercial chickens and 11 in backyard flocks.
• The number of poultry affected by these outbreaks has reached a total of more than 6.9 million*. This figure includes over 4.1 million commercial chickens*, 2.8 million commercial turkeys and over 7,000 backyard poultry.
• The disease has also affected five captive wild birds.