A new variant of H5N1 avian flu spills separately on dairy cows in Nevada and Arizona, prompting new theories about how the virus is spreading, leading to questions that include an ongoing outbreak.
The news comes amid the removal of federal agency experts, including employees who were responding to the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Department of Agriculture. .
Additional spills have an impact on how to prevent such spreading, changing experts’ views on how unusual referrals to herds exist.
“Now I’m endemic in cattle. Sheemalakdawala, an influenza virologist and co-director at the Amory School of Medicine’s Airborne Pathogen Transmission Center, has no way of containment in itself.
The current outbreak is unlikely to end without intervention, and the Trump administration needs to take great care to prevent the virus from causing more chaos.
But “it doesn’t seem to deal with the spread of the virus,” said Bogmatanji, an infectious disease doctor.
Since the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009-10, the ongoing spread of avian flu has been happening against the backdrop of the worst flu season in 15 years.
A surge in seasonal flu cases puts pressure on the health system, making it difficult to detect rare variants such as H5N1, and people and animals infected with seasonal and avian flu produce new, more dangerous variants It increases the risk of relocation that may be possible.
“With a lot of flu, there’s a good chance the virus will resort immediately,” Cakdawara said. She also noted that while it could resolve again among animals like cows, there are now multiple variants detected in herds.
At the same time, the CDC’s seasonal flu vaccination campaign was suspended on Thursday. Longtime anti-vaxing activist Robert F. Kennedy JR reportedly sought “informed consent” ads on his behalf. The meeting of independent vaccine advisors was also postponed to Thursday.
The United States has also stopped communicating with the World Health Organization regarding influenza data.
New upheavals for dairy cows in Nevada and Arizona were detected through a new bulk milk test strategy recently implemented in the US, both of which appeared in the fall and became dominant among North America. It is related to variants. bird. A teenage girl from British Columbia suffered from severe illness, and a Louisiana man died after contracting the variant.
In Nevada, dairy workers were infected after intimate contact with dairy cows, and genomic sequencing revealed mutations that have previously been associated with more effective spread among people.
“These are opportunities for viruses to continue adapting, and we are concerned that there may ultimately be viruses that can be efficiently transmitted between humans and that they may actually change,” he said. Outbreak dynamics,” Titanji said.
Camels have raised three theories about how avian flu continues to spill on cows.
The first is a rare event in which liquid from a sick bird somehow contacts the milk of a cow. For example, if a bird defecates into a milking device. It was the practical theory of the first ripples detected in a Texas cattle almost a year ago. However, birds rarely come into close contact with milking equipment, and it is “impossible” that this will happen three times, Camelwara said.
It is much more common for birds to stop feeding troughs where feces can mix with the feed. Usually, cows infected with such oral or nasal contact do not see the virus spread to the breast.
However, in the rare event that the cow becomes systemic, enters the breast tissue and replicates in a massive amount, if the cow is unhealthy, it is possible that camel-wall hypothesized.
The third theory? People may be spreading the virus from birds or another intermediate breed to cattle.
“We know that human infections from birds, we do know that it happens more frequently,” Camelwara said. “It’s likely that people who handle dead birds and chickens infected with H5 will get infected, and then they will get infected with cows.”
All of these theories require more evidence and research, many of which are now threatened by the suspension of scientific funding from the Trump administration.
Two studies have now been released that have temporarily suspended with weekly reports of CDC morbidity and mortality.
Blood tests from 150 veterinarians revealed that three veterinarians had recently had H5N1 infections. One infected veterinarian worked in a state with no cases among cattle, while the other two were unaware that they were in contact with an animal that was tested positive for H5.
A study of two Michigan households shows that dairy workers may have spread H5N1 to indoor cats.
National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett announced a new strategy to the public in the face of CBS on Sunday, leaving the effort to contain the outbreak.
Previously, authorities “were just spending billions of dollars on randomly killing chickens within the boundaries where they found sick chicken,” Hassett said. Infected poultry is culled this way because it is very unlikely to withstand infections. Such containment could help stop the spread to other animals and those who care for them.
Instead, Hassett broached the idea without providing details of using “biosecurity and medicines” to “better, smarter boundaries.”
