Four more outbreaks of bird flu have been reported across Poland, bringing the total number of incidents in Europe’s largest poultry producer to six.
Outbreaks were confirmed in Wolka Orlowska and OlchowiecKolonia, both in the Lubelskie region of Poland, a spokesperson for the governor of the Lubelskie region said on Twitter.
Another outbreak of the H5N8 strain reported on Friday was in the eastern Lubelskie region at a farm about 500 metres from where two cases in turkeys were confirmed.
Until then Poland had not had an outbreak of bird flu since 2017.
An outbreak of the H5N8 strain was also confirmed on a chicken farm in Przygodzice, in the western Wielkopolskieregion, Poland’s General Veterinary Inspectorate said in a statement.
60 000 birds are expected to be gassed in Lubelskie region, regional veterinary officer Pawel Piotrowski told Reuters on Friday. Forty thousand have already died as a result of the flu, he added.
He said around 100 000 birds could be affected in Lubelskie and there was a big risk of the virus spreading in the area as there were a lot of poultry farms close together.
“The area has been secured against people coming in who shouldn’t be there… we are focusing on cleaning the enclosures where birds have been affected,” he said.
Local authorities said in a statement on Tuesday that the virus was a sub-type of highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu that can also pose risks to humans.
Piotrowski said that while a danger to humans could not be completely ruled out, the risk of the infection was much lower than for birds for whom it can be deadly.
