Over the past month, South Africa’s veterinary agency has officially confirmed just one new HPAI outbreak in poultry.
According to the notification to the OIE, the H5N1 virus serotype was detected on a farm with 175 poultry in Ekurhuleni. Around half of the birds died. This city municipality is in the province of Gauteng, and there have been previous outbreaks in this area.
Latest cases bring the total outbreaks for this region to 86 since March of 2021. More than 4.54 million poultry have been directly impacted through mortality or culling.
Around the same time, 270 additional poultry were involved in another outbreak near Ladysmith (Emnambithi) in KwaZulu-Natal.
As well as these cases in poultry, six more wild birds in South Africa have tested positive for the H5N1 virus. These have been registering with the OIE since the end of March.
Avian flu returns to Mali poultry farms | WATTPoultry (wattagnet.com)