Avian influenza overview March-June 2025.
EFSA journal. European Food Safety Authority·
- DOI
- 10.2903/j.efsa.2025.9520
- PMID
- 40703963
- PMCID
- PMC12284602
- OpenAlex
- W4412589644
- Study type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Publisher unavailable
- Article type
- journal-article
- Integrity
- current
Why this research matters now
Human infections with currently circulating avian A(H5) clade 2.3.4.4b viruses remain rare despite widespread animal circulation; the assessed EU/EEA risk is low for the general public and low-to-moderate for those with occupational exposure to infected animals or contaminated environments.
Structured evidence summary
Research question
The article summarises avian influenza virus detections in animals and humans across an approximately three-month reporting window (8 March – 6 June 2025), with a geographic focus on Europe supplemented by selected non-European reports.
Study design
The publication is a peer-reviewed overview/reporting summary presenting aggregated surveillance data; no primary study design, statistical analysis, or sampling framework is described in the abstract.
Population and setting
The setting is multi-country surveillance, reporting detections in domestic and wild birds, several mammalian species, and humans across at least six countries in Asia and the Americas, with Europe as the primary focus.
Main findings
365 HPAI A(H5) detections were reported in birds across 24 European countries, predominantly A(H5N1), affecting waterfowl, poultry ducks and chickens (notably in Hungary and Poland). Mammalian detections included foxes, otters, seals, a domestic cat, and the first reported HPAI A(H5N1) infection in a sheep (UK). Non-European findings included continued A(H5N1) in US dairy cattle and first detections in a US gray fox, a South Korean leopard cat, and a US long-tailed weasel. Twenty human infections and four deaths were reported across six countries, mostly A(H9N2) and A(H5N1), with documented poultry exposure in a majority of A(H5N1) cases and no reported human-to-human transmission.
Public-health relevance
Human infections with currently circulating avian A(H5) clade 2.3.4.4b viruses remain rare despite widespread animal circulation; the assessed EU/EEA risk is low for the general public and low-to-moderate for those with occupational exposure to infected animals or contaminated environments.
Important limitations
This summary is limited to the supplied single-article abstract and bibliographic metadata and therefore lacks methodological detail on surveillance sources, case ascertainment, geographic representativeness, and denominator data; the original paper is required for decision-grade interpretation.
GIDS interpretation
The article is catalogued under infectious disease topics related to influenza transmission dynamics and is indexed against multiple affected countries, which may aid retrievability of the overview in literature databases; no claim is made here that the paper itself validates any live surveillance signal.
Related GIDS surveillance
Literature context does not validate, explain, or change a surveillance signal. Exact and contextual relationships are shown separately.
Evidence relationships
This article has 8 auditable classifier relationships to diseases, places, topics, and study design.