Hundreds of birds at a Queens live poultry market have succumbed to a new bird flu outbreak — less than two weeks after the shops were allowed to reopen as the virus runs rampant across the nation.
At least 150 birds were found on Monday to be infected with the extremely contagious and devastating virus, data from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service shows.
The sprawling infection marks the first at a live market in the Big Apple since early February, when 1,240 birds at Queens and Bronx shops were found to be harboring the disease.
The widespread devastation led Gov. Kathy Hochul to shut down all live poultry markets in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County, an order that lasted just over one week
The ban was lifted on Feb. 22, despite activists pleading with Hochul to permanently close them down as the virus continues to spread across the country.
Activists warned that there was no way to regulate the live markets in the face of the crisis, with some claiming they were hawking “visibly sickly-looking” chickens to unsuspecting customers.
“This latest outbreak just validates what we’ve been saying — that there is simply no way to operate wet markets in NYC during a bird flu crisis without endangering public health,” Edita Birnkrant, executive director for animal activist group NYCLASS, told The Post.
“The Governor should have shut down the markets indefinitely until there is a handle on bird flu, as we called for. Instead, she is allowing bird flu to flourish in poorly regulated slaughterhouses placed in densely populated neighborhoods with zero PPE or safety requirements for the public.”
Bird flu can jump to humans, with 70 confirmed cases in the US, according to the CDC.
More than 300 million birds have been killed from the bird flu.
