On Sunday, the British government confirmed a strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus in a commercial poultry farm at a premises near the town of St Ives in southwest England.
Following this, the UK government decided via a statement for all poultry on the premises will be humanely culled, and a 3 km protection zone.
This is the first confirmation of the HPAI H5N1 strain in kept birds this season and is following recent detections of HPAI H5N5 in wild birds in south west England and continental Europe.
Bird flu or avian influenza, has killed hundreds of millions of birds around the globe in recent years, and quickly spread to mammals, raising concerns on how it may lead to human-to-human transmission if care isn’t taken.
The UK increased the threat level of bird flu to medium in mid-October, but the country is no stranger to the disease experiencing several bird flu outbreaks over the years, including one in 2021 that was then described as the largest ever in the country.
