Veterinarians have destroyed another flock of poultry birds infected with avian flu in Tennessee, making a total of three incidents of bird flu in less than a week.
Chickens on a farm in Giles County, Tenn., tested positive for low-pathogenic avian flu. They had to be “depopulated,” destroyed and buried by state veterinarians, local news outlet WKRN reported Thursday.
This case of bird flu is the third confirmed incident this week, but each case appears to be different strains of the virus. Authorities confirmed a different strain of the virus at a turkey farm in Wisconsin Thursday, and federal inspectors found a more pernicious strain of the avian flu virus at a chicken farm in a neighboring Lincoln County, Tenn.
Department of Agriculture officials destroyed more than 73,000 birds at Lincoln County farm, the USDA said in a statement Sunday.
The avian flu found on the Tennessee farm last week is the same strain as the virus in China that has killed a total of 328 people since 2013, but USDA says it is still genetically different.
“This is NOT the same as the China H7N9 virus that has impacted poultry and infected humans in Asia,” the USDA said in a statement Tuesday.
“While the subtype is the same as the China H7N9 lineage that emerged in 2013, this is a different virus and is genetically distinct from the China H7N9 lineage,” the statement said.
Some 50 million chickens, turkeys and ducks had to be killed during America’s worst outbreak of avian flu in 2015, but Tennessee state agriculture officials said the current cases represent a different strain.
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