The Bird flu is spreading rapidly among cows. It is also infecting skunks, pumas and red foxes.
However, as the bird flu, highly contagiousaffects mammals throughout the United States, until now only one human case has been reported.
But that’s probably just because extremely limited testing is being done in people to detect it. State governments and farm owners have prevented For Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) teams to conduct on-the-ground research that would provide a more complete picture of the virus’s prevalence in humans.
That threatens to harm federal officials’ response to an outbreak that many experts consider the biggest test for pandemic preparedness systems since COVID-19. The recent patient is recovering after experiencing redness in the eyes as the only symptom. However, bird flu typically kills half of the people known to have been infected, suggesting the danger it poses if it were to spread widely.
The CDC is not authorized to conduct field investigations without an invitationand the states that have confirmed infected cattle say they have made no such approach to the agency.
Private dairy farms would also have to welcome CDC researchers, a complicated proposition in an industry that relies heavily on immigrant workers who often are wary of interacting with government officials and they are worried about losing income if they test positive. Farms may also be reluctant to look for infected cows, fearing that this could have disadvantages for their low-profit-margin businesses.
“The CDC can’t do the kind of testing and research work they need,” said Abraar Karan, an infectious disease researcher at Stanford University. “That is a huge and glaring problem.”.
The CDC says that the current risk to the general public from bird flu is low, because it is not known to be transmitted efficiently from person to person. But each infection in a cow or human provides an opportunity for the virus to mutate and better adapt to mammalian respiratory cells.
The key to understanding that risk (and preventing the emergence of a deadly pandemic) is the ability to detect infection and track molecular changes in the virus.
“We are playing with fire,” said Sam Scarpino, a professor at Northeastern University who helped lead pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation during the COVID pandemic. ““We are not really doing the surveillance to say that it is not here”.
Field testing of avian flu
CDC Director Mandy Cohen said that Your agency is prepared to carry out tests of avian flu in the field and other forms of surveillance.
“We are ready to deploy,” Cohen said in an interview Monday. “We have been for weeks.” Those on hold at the CDC include multilingual epidemiological teams and multidisciplinary.
However, the nine states with infected cattle (Texas, New Mexico, Michigan, Kansas, Idaho, Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio and South Dakota) They said in statements that they have not invited the CDC.
In New Mexico and Texas, the only two states that have reported that have conducted their own testing, the scope of that work has been limited. New Mexico tested three people for bird flua spokesperson said in an email.
The Texas Department of State Health Services tested about 20 people, with one positive case in a dairy farm worker. The worker showed signs of conjunctivitis with red and swollen eyes and returned to work the day after the test. A department spokesperson said he has not invited the CDC “because we have not found any dairy farms interested in participating in an epidemiological field study.”
Since March, more than 30 people have been tested for novel influenza A, the broad category of flu that includes H5N1, and more than 220 have been monitored for symptomsmany of whom are asked to inform themselves about the signs of the diseaseaccording to the CDC.
CDC is monitoring multiple flu indicators and Cohen notes that emergency room data and commercial laboratories across the United States do not currently show concerning patterns.
“The good news is that we are not seeing anything unusual”Cohen said, as an increase in the number of doctors ordering flu tests.
However, he also highlighted the need to continue working with agricultural partnersespecially given the novel nature of how this strain of bird flu is spreading.
“We have worked very robustly with our poultry farmers, but this is new in livestock,” Cohen said.
The big problem’
The FDA found traces of the H5N1 virus in 1 in 5 retail milk samples. Although pasteurization has been shown to render the pathogen harmless, this incidence shows that has spread widely among cows. In the United States, about 36 dairy herds are known to have been affected.
The USDA recently said it is looking for manufacturers that are interested in manufacturing a safe and effective vaccine for use in livestock targeting the virus.
People most likely to be infected (dairy farm workers who regularly touch cows) They do not necessarily go to the doctor for treatment, say community health workers.
Wastewater testing in Texas found traces of H5N1, which could be attributed to humans or animals with the virus. From hundreds of sites examined weekly by a research group, three were analyzed for genetic markers of H5N1 and it was confirmed that all three had it. The researchers wrote that cow’s milk entering sewage systems is a likely explanation for those findings.
“It is almost certain that we have overlooked the human cases”Scarpino said, referring to the findings on Texas wastewater. “The real question we need to answer is: Are there thousands of flu cases that we miss or just a handful?”
Workers’ reluctance
Even if the CDC obtained authorization from states and farms for on-site testingthey would face an additional challenge: Workers would have to agree to participate, and many of them would likely be hesitant to do so.
Fear of losing a job, language barriers, transportation costs and distrust in public health systems are factors that could deter immigrants from consenting to testing, said Bethany Alcauter, research director at the National Center for Farmworker Health. She said the situation reminds her of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when workers were reluctant to test and the disease was not well understood.
Lus Chavez, rural outreach director for Family Support Services in Amarillo, Texas, said spoke to dairy workers in late February with flu-like symptomsincluding congestion, but who tested negative for flu and COVID.
Farmworkers, he said, were convinced it was a new strain of COVID that wasn’t showing up in tests.
Chavez said the Texas health department contacted her to announce that can provide voluntary testingbut workers are reluctant to do so for fear of retaliation for expressing concerns or worries about lost wages.
Even if workers choose to be tested, no need to reveal where they workanother challenge for authorities trying to track and contain the virus.
CDC is engaged in discussions with several states about creating field investigations to answer questions about the ongoing outbreak, including examining Flu antibodies in blood samples from farm workers to see if any of them had been previously infected. The CDC would help establish protocols for studies that would allow data to be standardized across states. Such an effort could also face doubts from farms and staff.
It’s not just the shortage of bird flu tests that worries health experts public. Some say the lack of funding and research It has also left the United States unprepared if a broader outbreak of bird flu (or any other deadly virus) occurs.
“We will not be prepared”said Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois. “We’re not even dealing with what’s in front of us.”
