Avian flu: a “highly pathogenic” outbreak spotted in Seine-Maritime

An outbreak of “highly pathogenic” avian flu was detected on Monday in a farmyard in Seine-Maritime, the prefecture announced in a press release. This outbreak was discovered in Saint-Sauveur-d'Emmalleville, a town located between Le Havre and Fécamp, the prefecture said. To avoid “any risk of spreading the virus to other farms”, a prefectural decree defined restricted zones which are set up “within a radius of 3 and 10 kilometers around the contaminated establishment”, according to the same source.

“As part of measures to combat the spread of the virus, an operation to depopulate all birds present on the farm affected by the outbreak of avian influenza will be carried out by State services,” specifies the prefecture. Last week, the level of risk linked to avian flu in the French metropolitan territory went from “negligible” to “moderate”, according to a decree published in the Official Journal. This increase in the level of risk to the second of the three French levels (negligible, moderate, high) is linked to the “highlighting of infection dynamics in migratory wild avifauna in neighboring countries”.