World News for Students of English

23-02-2022 07:00

A strain of influenza has spread in Kentucky and Virginia, US; it is deadly to chickens and other fowl. Farms hope they’ll avoid an outbreak similar to the one in 2015 that killed 50 million birds across 15 US states.

The virus was spreading for months in Europe and Asia, and people found it in wild birds in Canada before health officials found an outbreak at a turkey farm in Indiana, US. Wild birds often carry strains of influenza; however, they usually don’t get sick. Those strains get easily into farm birds, and they mutate into more deadly viruses.

If the virus spreads more, egg, turkey, and chicken prices will likely rise, and the availability of these products will drop. Mexico is among the countries that already banned or limited poultry purchases from Indiana after officials found the virus there.

Difficult words: strain of influenza (a variety of a common sickness), fowl (a bird that people eat as food, for example, a hen or duck), mutate (to develop a new form).

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