Hundreds of dead birds have reportedly been falling from the sky in dystopian scenes in Pennsylvania.
The culprit is thought to be the H5N1 bird flu strain that has been devastating poultry and dairy farms across the US and sporadically infecting people.
A wildlife nonprofit in the Poconos confirmed dozens of snow geese had tested positive for the virus.
Janine Tancredi, the co-executive director of The Wilderz at Pocono Wildlife, told local news: ‘People were reporting like birds falling from the sky.
‘It seems far-fetched, but because they become so neurologically disabled, they don’t know their whereabouts. They’re flying into trees. They’re flying into houses.’
She said over the past few days, all 35 snow geese her team tested for H5N1 came back positive, but she suspects the true number of birds affected is ‘probably more like thousands.’
Locals are being urged to avoid dead birds or contact with live ones, and keep pets away from waterways and carcasses.
There have not been any human cases of H5N1 in Pennsylvania but residents in 10 states have been infected.
Hundreds of snow geese have died in Pennsylvania due to bird flu. Wildlife officials say they’ve ‘never seen it this bad’
H5N1 has been ravaging poultry and cattle herds since 2022, and has reached farms in all 50 states.
It wasn’t until April 2024 that the virus infected a person who had come in direct contact with a sick cow.
Sixty-five more human cases tied to the current outbreak have been reported since then, including a severe infection that required hospitalization in Louisiana.
Most exposures (40 cases) were linked to dairy herds, mostly in California with 36 cases, followed by Michigan and Texas, each reporting one or two cases.
Poultry farms and culling operations accounted for 23 exposures, with the highest concentration in Washington (11 cases) and Colorado (9 cases).
Only one case involved other animal exposure, reported in Louisiana, and two cases had unknown exposure sources in California and Missouri.
The severe case in Louisiana has so far been an outlier. Most infections have been mild, causing pink-eye, mild fever, sore throat, and fatigue. But Louisiana officials said this more serious case of the disease was ‘not unexpected’.
The CDC maintains that the general risk to the public is low, given that the people who have gotten sick had contact with infected farm animals.
USDA workers are shown disinfecting a turkey farm in Minnesota. The bird flu has felled poultry herds across all 50 states since the outbreak began in 2022
In Pennsylvania, wildlife officials believe the number of geese dead from bird flu could number in the thousands
But states are becoming increasingly concerned.
California, where 37 human infections have been reported, has declared a state of emergency amid fears that it could spread to people.
This isn’t so farfetched, as emerging evidence suggests that the virus could mutate in such a way that it can more readily infect humans.
After the CDC sequenced the virus in the severely ill Louisiana patient who had contact with backyard poultry and compared it with samples of other H5N1 viruses from dairy cows, wild birds, poultry, and previous human patients.
The mutations found in the virus from the Louisiana patient were not seen in the poultry living on the patient’s property, suggesting that the virus did not already have these mutations when the patient was infected.
Instead, these changes likely developed as the virus multiplied inside the patient’s body.
But more positively, the changes did not fundamentally alter the virus’s overall ‘avian’ characteristics. The virus still primarily retained the genetic traits suited for infecting birds, not humans.
Disease among livestock takes a massive toll on farmers’ incomes.
And as farmers cull their herds of poultry and dairy cows, the food their farms produce diminishes, leading to constrained supply, translating to higher prices for consumers.
Bird flu affects more than just farm birds, though, as shown in Pennsylvania, where the state’s Game Commission said it is suspected to have caused the deaths of about 200 snow geese in the greater Allentown area.
Like all flus, the virus is spread primarily through droplets in the air which are breathed in or get into a person’s mouth, eyes or nose
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About 50 miles north, the Pocono Wildlife and Rehabilitation Center has taken in dozens of birds showing symptoms of the bird flu since mid-December.
Sampson Metzgar, the center’s avian specialist, said: ‘Tremors, a lot of head shaking, very uncoordinated. They are struggling to balance, they will walk a few feet then sit down for a while. The birds almost seem disoriented and confused.’
Ms Tancredi at the Wilderz at Pocono Wildlife, meanwhile, said her team is ‘euthanizing on arrival.’
‘We don’t really have a choice.’
When she and her team arrived at a quarry in the Nazareth area on Thursday, they discovered hundreds of birds that had already died, she said.
She added that the total number of birds affected is ‘probably more like thousands.’
