A growing, but incomplete, picture of affected States
#18,025
It's been a busy day, with a media report by Tyne Morgan writing in the Bovine Veterinarian a report that quotes Andrew Bowman at Ohio State University - who has tested 150 samples of pasteurized milk purchased at the retail level - as finding 38% (n=58) were PCR positive for H5N1 RNA.
PCR positive does not indicate whether the virus remains infectious (aka `viable'), so samples have been forwarded to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where attempts are being made to culture the virus.
The milk was reportedly purchased from 6 states, but the manufacturing codes on the positive samples came from as many as 10 states. Since the USDA has only confirmed 8 states with H5N1 in dairy cows, this suggests the problem is more widespread than has been reported.
The decision announced yesterday that (starting next week) lactating cows must be tested prior to interstate transport should provide more data, but testing remains limited and voluntary for the vast majority of cattle herds.
Another report by Rhonda Brooks, also in the Bovine Veterinarian called A Message to the Ag Industry about H5N1 warns that agricultural interests must take this threat very seriously, and quotes Texas veterinarian Dr. Barb Petersen as reporting seeing `sick humans' along with `sick cows' at multiple dairy farms.
While only one mild case has been reported, in yesterday's HHS meeting (as reported by Helen Branswell for STAT), CDC Deputy Director Nirav Shah acknowledged there have been obstacles to testing farm workers.
“We’ve had a diversity of levels of engagement with farms,” Shah said. “These situations are challenging. There may be owners that are reluctant to work with public health to say nothing of individual workers who may be reluctant to sit down with somebody who identifies themself as being from the government in some way.”At the same meeting, Mike Watson from APHIS confirmed that the USDA had `met some resistance' from some farmers with infected cows, and it is unknown whether orders to discard infected milk are being strictly enforced.
That optimistically assumes that no spillover occurred over the winter, when infected birds were more abundant. Our spillover to cattle in the appears to have occurred in late 2023, but wasn't detected until cattle were tested in March of this year.
I've found very little from Mexico, which both exports and imports cattle from the United States. While I suspect (read: hope) some testing is being conducted, no one seems to be talking about it.
As we discussed a few days ago, the consumption of raw (unpasteurized) milk is far more common in Mexico than in the U.S., and surveillance for potential human infections is arguably less robust than here in the states.
While there is no way to know how big of a deal this HPAI outbreak in cattle will become, this crisis has demonstrated - once again - how unprepared the world is to deal with an inconvenient, and highly unpredictable, zoonotic threat.
I get it.
We're all traumatized and weary from the last pandemic, and by all rights we should have a few years before we must deal with another. But viruses don't read calendars, and all indications are that the time-between-pandemics has grown shorter.
Which means we need to get better at surveillance and testing, and far more aggressive in responding to threats. The H5N1 virus has been honing its skills for years, if we hope to be able to cope, we need to do the same.
As always, the volunteer newshounds on FluTrackers are all over this story, and you'll find expert reporting from Lisa Schnirring at CIDRAP and Helen Branswell at STAT News.
