Five more suspected cases of avian influenza were reported in California today, adding to six already confirmed cases, according to the California Department of Public Health. The state is the nation’s largest supplier of dairy products and a hub for avian influenza in cattle, which had public health experts concerned from the beginning of the outbreak.
The people who were confirmed to have been infected had worked with dairy cows infected with the H5N1 virus, also known as avian influenza, suggesting that the virus has not yet developed the ability to effectively transmit between humans. . However, the infected people work on nine different farms in the state, indicating the virus is widespread among herds.
Public health experts have criticized national and state efforts to contain the virus and recommended increasing screening and surveillance tools to keep the virus under control. Last week, footage of a pile of dead cows left outside a California farm went viral.
Anja Raudabaugh, CEO of Western United Dairies, told Barron’s: “So many cows are dying from avian influenza and rendering trucks are backing up. It was abandoned,” he said. I’m hopelessly overwhelmed at the moment. ”
As of October 11, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had confirmed infection in 299 herds of cattle in 14 states. Additionally, more than 100 million poultry and 10,000 wild birds are affected, and the virus is known to have the ability to spread from birds to cattle and back again, making containment even more difficult. It has become. Each time a virus infects, it also increases the chance that it will mutate in some way to make it easier to infect humans, posing a pandemic risk comparable to COVID-19.
Bird flu has also occurred in other countries around the world. France, along with neighboring European countries such as Germany, announced today that the national threat of bird flu has increased from “negligible” to “moderate” as cases of infection in livestock have been reported. Australia is the only continent so far to avoid H5N1 infections and yesterday invested $96 million in vaccines and increased surveillance to keep it that way.
