TL;DR
H5N1 has now circulated in the US for four consecutive years — 20 commercial flocks hit in one reporting period, 75 human cases across the Americas, and the virus keeps jumping species.
MSM Perspective
CIDRAP reports 20 commercial poultry operations affected in a single period while PAHO confirms 75 human infections across the Americas since April 2022.
X Perspective
Biosecurity accounts on X track each new detection with growing frustration that four years of sustained spread has produced no coherent containment strategy.
H5N1 avian influenza arrived in North America in early 2022. Four years later, it has not left. The virus circulates continuously in wild bird populations, spills into commercial poultry with metronomic regularity, and has crossed into mammals — dairy cattle, marine mammals, domestic cats — with a frequency that would have been alarming a decade ago but now barely registers as news.
This paper reported last edition that 67 commercial flocks were hit in 30 days, with 11.54 million birds culled. The pace has not slowed. CIDRAP's March 5 report documented 20 commercial poultry operations affected in a single reporting period. [1] Iowa reported its fifth detection of 2026 in a Washington County flock on March 4. [2]
The human toll remains low but persistent. PAHO confirmed 75 human H5N1 infections across the Americas between April 2022 and March 9, 2026, with two deaths across five countries. [3] Three of those infections occurred in 2025 alone. No pandemic-level escalation has materialized, but epidemiologists emphasize that sustained circulation in diverse animal hosts gives the virus continuous opportunities to acquire mutations favoring human-to-human transmission.
Marine mammals along the US coasts continue testing positive. The fourth year of H5N1 is not a crisis. It is something more insidious: a permanent condition that the country has decided to live with rather than solve.
-- KENJI NAKAMURA, Tokyo
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