IN officials: No new bird-flu infections reported

A brand-new strain of avian flu, this one called H7N8, has been found on a turkey farm in Indiana. Though most of the flock on the IN farm was killed within 29 hours. Tests confirmed eight out of the nine have a low-pathogenic strain of the virus, the USDA said in a statement on January 17.

U.S. Department of Agriculture officials have arrived in the state where officials told Indiana Public Media that 245,000 commercial turkeys and 156,000 commercial chickens have been affected by the flu, also known as the H7N8 virus, in Dubois County, Indiana, northeast of Evansville.

John Clifford, DVM, the USDA’s chief veterinarian, said, “It appears that there was a low pathogenic virus circulating in the poultry population in this area, and that virus likely mutated into a highly pathogenic virus in one flock”. Of the birds, about 62 percent are turkeys while the rest are chickens that were not infected, but were considered to be in “dangerous contact” with an infected turkey flock. That stamping-out operation brings the bird loss number to 401,163.

Indiana State Board of Animal Health spokeswoman Denise Derrer says about 13,000 turkeys remaining at two farms were expected to be killed Wednesday.

“If need be we can use that to try and eliminate the virus as quickly as possible so we don’t put more birds at risk”, Myers said.

So far outbreaks have been reported in Dubois County only, but the surveillance area has now been expanded to include parts of Crawford, Davies, Martin, and Orange counties. Mittal says the strain of flu is not contagious to humans and people shouldn’t be too concerned. IN health officials have implemented their monitoring plan, the CDC added. North American viruses have typically posed less of a threat to humans than viruses from the Asian Avian H5N1 lineage, said Carol Cardona, an avian flu expert at the University of Minnesota.

“Finding these cases as low-path strains shows we are keeping pace ahead of the virus”, Williams said in the e-mailed statement.