Overlaid by the reports on the corona pandemic, another drama is currently playing largely unnoticed: "We are currently experiencing the strongest avian influenza epidemic in Germany and Europe," said the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI) on the island of Riems to the Germans Press agency with.

New cases are added every day, and not just in wild birds.

"There is no end in sight, the countries affected range from Finland to the Faroe Islands to Ireland, from Russia to Portugal." Reports are also coming from Canada, India and East Asia.

The prospects for the coming winter weeks are not good, the Federal Research Institute for Animal Health said.

The bird flu subtype H5N1 dominates, H5N8 also occurs to a small extent.

H5N1 is also considered to be potentially dangerous for humans; an infection can be fatal in rare individual cases.

Only a few transmissions to humans have been recorded for H5N8.

Human-to-human transmissions have not yet been proven for either subtype.

In Germany alone, 394 infections in wild birds such as wild ducks, wild geese, swans and gulls have been recorded since the beginning of October (until December 29, as of 12.30 p.m.), mainly along the coast and particularly in Schleswig-Holstein.

In addition, the FLI registered 46 outbreaks in poultry holdings, 18 of them in Lower Saxony alone.

Other cases concerned North Rhine-Westphalia (9), Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (8), Schleswig-Holstein (4), Berlin / Brandenburg, Bavaria and Thuringia (2 each) and Saxony-Anhalt (1).

Across Europe, according to the FLI data, 675 infections in wild birds and 534 outbreaks in farms were recorded during this period.

In addition, there are isolated cases of mammals: this year it has already been proven that red foxes in the Netherlands and Finland, gray seals in Sweden, seals in Germany and other otters in Finland have contracted bird flu.

Avian influenza is currently affecting other regions severely.

The Israeli Ministry of Agriculture recently reported mass deaths in battery cages.

Hundreds of thousands of animals were killed to prevent further infection.

"The Ministry of Agriculture is concerned that people could be infected by infected battery cells in the vicinity of homes," it said.

It is now expected that there will be a shortage of eggs on the Israeli market - around 14 million eggs are missing every month due to bird flu.

According to media reports in Israel, about 20 percent of the cranes who come to Israel as migrating birds from southern Europe to stop there on their way to Africa are also affected by the disease.

Avian influenza is an infectious disease, especially among water birds, which migratory birds often spread over long distances.

In the previous season, from autumn 2020 to spring 2021 there had already been a serious epidemic in Germany and Europe - which is now likely to be exceeded.

The most important preventive measure to protect poultry is control and compliance with biosecurity measures, said the FLI.

Poultry farmers could check this with the aid of the animal disease traffic light at https:// risikampel.uni-vechta.de.

"No other measures are currently available."