Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI), infections in wild birds and in poultry holdings are increasing every day. Mammals such as red foxes, gray seals, harbor seals and otters are also infected with bird flu.
Werner Widmer, official veterinarian in the canton of Aargau, demonstrates how he takes a sample for a PCR test on a chicken.
(dpa)
Overlaid by the reports on the corona pandemic, another drama is currently playing largely unnoticed: “We are currently experiencing the strongest avian influenza epidemic in Germany and Europe,” the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI) on the island of Riems told the Germans Press agency with. New cases are added every day, and not just in wild birds. “There is no end in sight, the countries affected range from Finland to the Faroe Islands to Ireland, from Russia to Portugal.” Reports are also coming from Canada, India and East Asia.
The prospects for the coming winter weeks are not good, the Federal Research Institute for Animal Health said. In Germany alone, 394 infections in wild birds such as wild ducks, wild geese, swans and gulls were recorded between the beginning of October and December 29 (as of 12:30 p.m.), mainly along the coast and particularly in Schleswig-Holstein. In addition, the FLI registered 46 outbreaks in poultry holdings, 18 of them in Lower Saxony alone. Other cases concerned North Rhine-Westphalia (9), Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (8), Schleswig-Holstein (4), Berlin-Brandenburg, Bavaria and Thuringia (2 each) and Saxony-Anhalt (1).
Across Europe, according to the FLI data, 675 infections in wild birds and 534 outbreaks in farms were recorded during this period. In addition, there are isolated cases of mammals: this year it has already been proven that red foxes in the Netherlands and Finland, gray seals in Sweden, seals in Germany and other otters in Finland have contracted bird flu.