The ongoing bird flu outbreak at US dairy farms has heightened concerns among public health experts as more dairy herds have tested positive for the virus in recent months. The influenza A (H5N1) virus, commonly known as bird flu, is widespread in wild birds worldwide and has been circulating in US poultry since 2022, reports Xinhua news agency. However, the situation escalated in late 2023 when the virus is believed to have jumped from birds to dairy cows at a Texas farm. This was followed by a human infection in April linked to exposure to infected cattle.<\/p>\n
To date, three human cases of infection have been reported, bringing the total number of US H5N1 cases to four, including one case in 2022 linked to poultry exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The virus had been confirmed in at least 115 dairy herds across 12 states as of Thursday, according to the latest tally posted on the US Department of Agriculture\u2019s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service website.<\/p>\n
In a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers found \u201csmall, detectable amounts of infectious (H5N1) virus remained in raw milk samples with high virus levels\u201d when treated at 72 degrees Celsius for 15 seconds \u2014 one of the standard pasteurisation methods used by the dairy industry, according to an NIH press release last week. The CDC noted that while the current public health risk is low, it is watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposures.<\/p>\n
But public health experts have paid attention to the government\u2019s slow response and inadequate testing. \u201cFailures in testing continued. This was a serious problem in the early months of COVID-19, in mpox, and now with H5N1. There will be future disease emergencies \u2014 we have to do better,\u201d wrote Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist, on social media X on Thursday. Gronvall, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, called for a public-private partnership between the government, test developers, and clinical laboratories to streamline testing rollout and information sharing at the beginning of an event.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization considers bird flu a public health concern, as these viruses, including the H5N1 strain, can result in mild to severe illness and death and have the potential to mutate to become more contagious, says the organisation on its website. While infections have been confirmed in cattle across the country, only 45 individuals have been tested for novel influenza A since March, with 550 under monitoring, according to the CDC\u2019s latest update on June 14.<\/p>\n
Aside from the limited availability of bird flu tests, experts said the low trust of farm owners and farm workers towards the government also makes it difficult to detect potential cases. \u201cThe United States\u2019 response to H5N1 \u2014 \u2018bird flu\u2019 \u2014 has taken too long, showing how risky gaps in coordination and trust can be,\u201d wrote Tom Frieden, former director of the CDC, in an analysis published by CNN on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrust toward the United States government is low, especially among rural Americans who are on the front line of these outbreaks,\u201d added Frieden, president and chief executive of Resolve to Save Lives. Many dairy farm workers in the United States are undocumented immigrants or migrants who may distrust the government or be hesitant to miss work if they test positive, CDC Principal Deputy Director Nirav Shah told Axios in a Tuesday report. Despite the allocation of federal funds to incentivise farm cooperation, no farms have enrolled in the voluntary on-site milk testing program, according to the US Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ongoing bird flu outbreak at US dairy farms has heightened concerns among public health experts as more dairy herds\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":47743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[14882,14881,14883,3737,14884,95],"class_list":["post-47742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-bird-flu","tag-dairy","tag-dairy-farms","tag-outbreak","tag-public-health-concerns","tag-usa"],"reading_time":"4 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}