The Connecticut Department of Agriculture has confirmed that H5N1 avian influenza, or the bird flu, has been discovered in a backyard flock in New Haven County. This is the first confirmed detection in New Haven County in 2025, according to the department, which may not only lead to widespread illness, but could cause economic challenges as well.
Bird flu is a highly contagious respiratory virus that can spread through birds and cause outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows. It is spread through birds, poultry and cows, ultimately affecting humans if they are in direct contact with contaminated environments, according to the CDC.
The current H5N1 strain of bird flu was first detected in March 2024, in goats on a farm, leading to a poultry flock testing positive, according to the CDC. On April 1, a human in the United States tested positive for H5N1 bird flu, which marked the first cow-to-human spread.
“At the very beginning, people were treating it like it was a normal cycle, then it became clear this wasn’t normal,” said University of Connecticut agricultural economic and natural resource environmental economist Kimberly Rollins, who is also a professor at UConn.
Typically, avian influenza lasts for a few months and eventually disappears, but so far, this strand has had different effects, according to Rollins.
“It didn’t do the thing that it normally does where it goes away and then it’s gone for several years before it comes back again…I don’t ever recall avian influenza lasting years. This has been a couple of years now,” said Rollins.
Bird flu can spread to humans when people encounter affected animals’ bodily fluids, such as milk, eggs, saliva or feces according to an article by Cleveland Clinic. If milk is pasteurized and eggs are not undercooked, humans will not get sick with the virus from those foods, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
In addition to human health risks, there are other effects of the virus that can affect the United States economically. Egg prices are sky rocketing, according to ABC News, because egg suppliers are forced to “cut production and, in turn, [cause] shortages nationwide, prompting skyrocketing prices.”
“In the past, we might not have even felt, in the supermarkets, much of an outbreak, but two years? This is different,” said Rollins.
The fewer eggs that make it to grocery stores, the higher the prices become. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that egg prices will go up 20% this year, as bird flu cases are causing an egg shortage.
“This is pretty serious. You can imagine that as the flocks get smaller and smaller in number, the demand is pretty much the same, but the supply is getting tighter and tighter, and as it becomes tighter, the same demand is chasing fewer product, and so the prices go up,” added Rollins.
Even restaurants like Waffle House are charging a $0.50 surcharge on eggs due to the bird flu, according to NBC News.