UK confirms bird flu cases at commercial poultry farm

Britain said on Sunday it had confirmed a strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus in commercial poultry at premises near the town of St Ives in southwest England.

All poultry on the premises will be humanely culled, and a 3 km protection zone and 10 km surveillance zone have been put in place, the UK government added in a statement.

It was the first confirmation of the HPAI H5N1 strain in kept birds this season and followed recent detections of HPAI H5N5 in wild birds in south west England and continental Europe, it added.

Bird flu or avian influenza, which has killed hundreds of millions of birds around the globe in recent years, has increasingly spread to mammals, raising concerns it may lead to human-to-human transmission.

Britain, which increased the threat level to medium in mid-October, has experienced several bird flu outbreaks over the years, including one in 2021 that was then described as the largest ever in the country.