In just 2022, there have been 22,851,072 commercial and backyard birds that have been affected by highly pathogenic avian influenza or HPAI.

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That means since January, 22,851,072 have died because of this disease.

About 58 percent of those birds were from Iowa.

aphis.usda.gov
aphis.usda.gov
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According to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, as of April 2nd, 13,290,545 birds have been affected by the virus in Iowa this year.

Over the weekend, two more cases were confirmed in Iowa in Sac and Humboldt Counties.

The case in Sac County affected 37,200 commercial turkey meat birds and in Humboldt, around 15,000 egg breeder chickens were affected.

Kailey Foster
Kailey Foster
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Last Thursday, cases were also detected in Osceola and Cherokee Counties- with the Osceola flock having five million birds affected by the virus.

The virus seems to be spreading quickly. In the last week (since Monday, March 28th) there have been seven affected flocks with 6.7 million birds having to be put down.

According to Iowa Capitol Dispatch when the 2015 outbreak of HPAI hit the United States, Iowa was also the hardest-hit state. Of the 50 million birds that were affected in the US, two-thirds of that were from Iowa.

Back in 2015, the outbreak only lasted two months, however, there is no way of knowing whether it will be that way this year. This year, the first detection of the disease also came around 6 weeks earlier than in 2015.

Numbers and information are from the USDA data. Data on the site can often take a few days to update after state agriculture officials announce new detections.

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