The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today confirmed 62 more avian flu outbreaks in dairy cattle, all involving California herds. The latest detections lift the state’s total since the end of August to 398 and the national total to 612.
California is the nation’s largest dairy producer, and outbreaks in the Central Valley have now affected nearly one-third of the state’s estimated 1,300 herd.
“This case is very concerning for a number of reasons,” says Rick Bright, an American immunologist and vaccine researcher and a U.S. government health official from 2016 to 2020. “It’s in an otherwise healthy teenager. Like a similar case in Missouri, there’s no clear source for infection and no direct farm connection.”
As H5N1 bird flu continues to spread around the US, health officials recently found that 7 percent of dairy workers tested on farms in two states had evidence of recent infection — and some had signs of infection even when they didn’t feel sick.
Pigs are the ideal genetic mixing vessel to generate a human pandemic influenza strain, because they have receptors in their respiratory tracts which both avian and human flu viruses can bind to.
...finding bird flu in a pig raises worries that the virus may be hitting a stepping stone to becoming a bigger threat to people, said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Brown University pandemic researcher.
Recent Comments