Almost 1.8 million farmed and captive birds have been culled in the past three months because of the spread of avian flu across the UK, the BBC has learned. There have been 33 outbreaks of the virus on farms and, on Wednesday, the government said bird-keepers in five more English counties would have to house flocks indoors from Sunday.

Poultry flocks infected with bird flu are culled to prevent the spread of the virus whereas culling wild birds is generally not feasible, contrary to posts online that suggest only domesticated birds are being killed in order to manipulate U.

The variant of bird flu that killed a Louisiana resident has now been found in dairy cows. Until now, the human cases of bird flu traced to cattle have been mild, mostly eye infections. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that a strain previously found only in wild birds has turned up in dairy herds in Nevada ‒ raising concerns that future human infections could be more serious.

H5N1 bird flu is branching out. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that a second type of H5N1 has likely spread from dairy The