The Ministry of Health of Austria declared this Thursday the whole territory of the country as a high-risk zone after detection of cases of avian influenza The number of cases in wild birds is on the increase. Therefore, as of midnight, the whole of Austria has been declared a high-risk area,” Health Minister Johannes Rauch said on the social network X.
Among the precautionary measures, Rauch said. it is forbidden to feed the animals outdoors.The contact between farm and wild animals should be avoided; and anyone who finds dead birds should report it to the authorities.
In 25 districts in six of the country’s nine Länder where a very high risk has been declared, farms with more than 50 animals have been required to to keep the animals.
Outbreaks of avian flu, which are common in the spring and fall, occur at the transmission of the virus to domestic poultry through infected wild birds and can become lethal in poultry.
Last September, cases of avian influenza were detected on farms in Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, France and Hungary.where 25,000 ducks were slaughtered last October.
In October, five outbreaks were detected in Galicia (Spain) in eight yellow-legged gulls. In view of the risk of new outbreaks, the European Commission extended until September 30, 2025 the prevention measures against avian influenza.
Precisely, United States has also been suffering from outbreaks of avian influenza on various farms for several months and the disease has already been transmitted to humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) was notified in October four new cases of the virus in humans, bringing the total in the country to 20, mostly linked to dairy farms, said the agency’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.