Preliminary tests have detected bird flu in a backyard flock in New Haven County, according to Connecticut’s Department of Agriculture. The announcement comes about a week after another backyard flock in New London County tested positive for the disease on Jan. 15.
The birds were destroyed as a precautionary measure.
While Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 has not yet been detected at any commercial farm in Connecticut, Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt said the state Department of Agriculture is regularly working with poultry farmers to make sure they know what is needed in order to keep their flocks safe.
“[We’re] talking to them about their biosecurity protocols and viewing what's happening at their production facilities,” Hurlburt said.
Connecticut is New England’s largest commercial egg producer, with nearly 1,000 poultry and egg farms that generated more than $49 million in sales in 2022, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
Steps to stem the spread of bird flu include:
- Keep wild birds and rodents out of poultry houses and coops.
- Don’t let poultry have contact with migratory waterfowl or other wild birds.
- Wash hands and disinfect boots before and after entering the poultry area.
- Do not share equipment or other supplies between coops or other farms.
- Clean and disinfect equipment and supplies between uses.
- Buy birds from reputable sources to receive healthy birds.
- Restrict traffic onto and off your property.
Hurlburt said these biosecurity protocols to prevent bird flu infections don't just apply to commercial egg producers, but also to any Connecticut resident with a backyard flock, whatever its size.
Human health precautions
While no human cases of bird flu have been reported in the Northeast, there have been at least 63 cases where a human contracted H5N1 from poultry or dairy cattle in other regions of the country.
Connecticut’s Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani said H5N1 is a respiratory disease spread in a similar fashion to many flu viruses.
“The mucus membrane contact is still where we think the primary contact is happening,” Juthani said.
That’s why hand washing is key, according to Juthani.
“If you get infected on your hands and then you rub your eyes, you rub your nose, or you do any of those kinds of things where your mucus membranes are getting directly impacted by the virus,” she said, that puts humans at risk.
Because infected animals shed the virus in feces, Juthani said Connecticut residents with a backyard flock may also carry fecal matter into a house and that could become dust in the air.
“It now can become a direct, in terms of mucus membrane, contact,” she said, which is why washing footwear is recommended after interactions with birds.
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the risk to public health is currently low since it cannot be transmitted from human to human, only from animal to human.
Jonathan Runstadler, chair of Infectious Disease and Global Health at Tufts University explains why.
“Most of the viruses that circulate in birds don't do well in humans because humans don't have the same distribution of receptors in the upper respiratory tract birds do,” Runstadler said.
But Runstadler added that this H5N1 virus seems to do well at binding to a lot of different species of hosts, which is not normally the case for bird flu.
Dairy cattle, pigs, domestic cats, and even seals and sea lions are becoming infected and dying.
Juthani said there is the concern that if it is allowed to spread it could “take on a genetic feature that allows it to transfer from human-to-human."
“We're trying to reduce the chance or risk that this becomes something bigger than what it is right now,” Juthani said.
Impacts at the grocery store
Runstadler said the strain of bird flu detected in Connecticut this month is the same one that first began killing birds in 2022 in North America, but it has been around in other parts of the world for more than 20 years.
Since its first detection in the U.S. in 2022, it has led to the destruction of tens of millions of egg laying chickens and sparked a surge in egg prices in 2023.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nationwide average of a cost of a dozen eggs in January 2023 was $4.82, more than double from the same time period the year before.
After that record, prices began to drop and bottomed out in August 2023, with an average price of just over $2. But since then, prices have resumed climbing. In December 2024, the nationwide average for a dozen eggs was $4.14.
The loss of commercial egg laying chickens is not showing any signs of slowing down. More than 21 million were destroyed last month and through the first three weeks of 2025, according to the USDA’s Egg Market Overview report.
Even so, the USDA expects 1.2% more eggs will be produced nationwide in 2025 than in 2024, but it will still be nearly 4% fewer eggs than in 2021, the year before the North American bird flu outbreak began.
