In South Dakota, HPAI was confirmed Oct. 21 in a commercial meat turkey flock of 20,000 birds in Hanson County.
This is South Dakota’s first HPAI case in October, but the state had three commercial flock infections in September and three in August. The state has had 17 commercial flocks affected by HPAI so far in 2026.
Roughly 90 birds in two Northern California backyard flocks have tested positive for avian influenza in October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.
The department said that approximately 40 birds in a backyard flock in Sacramento County were confirmed positive for the disease on Oct. 5, and roughly 50 birds in a Solano County backyard flock were confirmed positive on Oct. 20.
Canada geese found at a beach in Alameda earlier this month have tested positive for highly pathogenic avian flu, also known as bird flu, the East Bay Regional Park District announced Friday.
The birds were collected on Oct. 8 and Oct. 12 at Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach and the park district is advising people to take precautions to reduce potential exposure and possible human infections.
People should not touch wild birds and should maintain a distance of at least 50 feet if they encounter a dead bird, and should keep children and dogs away from birds, carcasses or bird droppings, according to the park district.
The United States Department of Agriculture confirmed that 934,600 birds were affected by the outbreak at a commercial table egg layer facility in Clinton County, Illinois. There is no treatment for bird flu, and the only way to stop the disease is to depopulate, or kill, all affected and exposed birds.
The state with the next highest number of birds affected by bird flu is Minnesota, with a total of 168,880 birds affected statewide.
Germantown officials told 5 On Your Side that the outbreak was confirmed at Rose Acre Farms outside of the village's limits. Rose Acre Farms is the nation's second-largest egg producer in the United States, according to the company's website.
5 On Your Side has reached out to Rose Acre Farms, the Illinois Department of Agriculture, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker's office for comment on the outbreak, along with what precautions are being taken to stop the outbreak's spread. Our newsroom has not received responses as of this article's publication.
Under the right conditions, however, that could change. A single mutation could give the bird flu a foothold in people and spark a pandemic that experts fear could be deadlier than COVID-19.
For that to happen, this bird flu would likely need to find an intermediate host — an animal vulnerable to viruses that infect both birds and humans. These animals would be crowded together, each infection raising the odds that a new strain could arise through mutation. Then, for that strain to jump across species, it would have to have access to humans and time to spread among them undetected.
That perfect petri dish exists right now, a ProPublica investigation found. For over two months, an outbreak of bird flu has raged uncontrolled on a Utah farm that raises thousands of mink for fur. Mink have lungs and airways that on a cellular level are remarkably similar to those of people; they have caught and spread other flus and infected some humans with COVID-19.
Instead of trying to stop the outbreak and prevent it from spilling into humans, state and federal officials have done little except try to keep its existence quiet, our investigation shows. The failure to act amounts to a cascade of missteps flu experts called “irresponsible” and “puzzling.” One called it “playing with fire.” [emphasis added]
Europe’s torrid summer set a gruesome record, killing more than 50,000 people in the continent’s cities from excess heat, according to research accepted for publication in Nature Health.
The toll is nearly double the estimated deaths in European cities during two of the deadliest past heat waves, in 2003 and ’22. Approximately two-thirds of this summer’s deaths stem from global warming that exacerbated the sweltering conditions, the scientists concluded.
The new study is a grim reminder that heat-related deaths continue to be a major problem in Europe despite growing awareness of what it takes to protect vulnerable people, says Kristie Ebi, a climate epidemiologist at the University of Washington who wasn’t involved in the study. “Almost all those deaths are preventable.”
