Avian flu: A “highly pathogenic” outbreak detected in a farmyard in Seine-Maritime

Restricted zones have been set up around a farmyard in Saint-Sauveur-d'Emmalleville, in Seine-Maritime, after the discovery on Monday of an outbreak of "highly pathogenic" avian flu. Located between Le Havre and Fécamp, the town is subject to measures intended to limit the spread of the virus, the prefecture announced in a press release.

A prefectural decree defines these perimeters “within a radius of 3 and 10 kilometers around the contaminated establishment”. The objective is to avoid “any risk of spreading the virus to other farms”. State services must also cull all the birds in the affected farmyard, as part of a “depopulation operation”.

Infection dynamics recorded

This outbreak was discovered when the level of risk linked to avian flu in mainland France was raised last week. According to a decree published in the Official Journal, it went from “negligible” to “moderate”, the second of three French levels, before the “high” level.

This increase is linked to the “evidence of infection dynamics in migratory wild avifauna in neighboring countries”.