#17,575
While we haven't seen any official press releases since last week (see Finland Food Authority: Preliminary Sequencing Of H5N1 In Fur Farms) the Finnish Ruokavirasto website has updated their H5N1 infected fur farm list again (see below) - adding an additional 2 farms today (July 26th), on top of the 2 that were added on Friday - bringing the total number of farms testing positive to 14.
The last WAHIS report filed was on July 20th, before the addition of the last 4 farms. At that time > 119,000 animals were listed as susceptible. The size of these latest farms has not been announced, but they are listed as having both blue fox, and mixed breed foxes.
While the number of new farms being added to the list appears to have slowed, local media reports indicate that the Food Safety Authority's testing labs are struggling to deal with the load (see Mass bird flu deaths causing test backlog), and that may be a factor.
This level of avian flu activity during the middle of summer - a time when bird flu is generally at its low point of the year - doesn't bode well for what we may see this fall.
Stay tuned.
