Canada: British Columbia's avian flu cases rise rapidly in unprecedented, deadly outbreak

Dread slips over Juschka Clarke at the sound of wild geese in the distance. “I bet you don’t even hear that,” the Chilliwack chicken farmer said to a neighbour. “But I do. I’m always listening for the wild birds.” Wild birds are largely responsible for the spread of avian influenza in B.C., with new cases being detected on commercial poultry farms each day, including four on Friday and 10 more in the seven days before that. The scale of the outbreak is unprecedented, said B.C.’s chief veterinarian Theresa Burns, whether you count from December 2021 when the first case of H5N1 appeared in Canada, or look only at B.C. this year. Thirty-six B.C. flocks, almost all in the Fraser Valley, were infected with the virus as of Friday afternoon when new cases were detected on farms in Chilliwack and Surrey, with more than 100 flocks and 3.7 million birds infected in the province over the last two years. B.C. cases make up about half of all Canadian cases in an outbreak that is devastating ...