First outbreak of novel bird flu strain reported at California poultry farm

‘Whether this novel H5N9 virus will cause human infections from its avian host and become a pandemic subtype is not known yet,’ Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The first outbreak of a novel bird flu in poultry has been detected on a duck farm in California, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Monday.

Authorities said the discovery of H5N9 bird flu in poultry came alongside the detection of the more common H5N1 strain on the same farm in Merced county, California, and that almost 119,000 birds on the farm had been killed since early December.