The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) today reported two more H5 avian flu infections, both in dairy workers, raising the state’s total to 36. Also, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today confirmed a presumptive case that Wisconsin reported this week in a poultry worker, raising the nation’s total to 64 from 9 states since the start of the year.
California monitors 5,000 people
At a briefing today, California health officials emphasized how useful the governor’s emergency proclamation is for mobilizing more staff and resources to address the virus in dairy herds, poultry flocks, and isolated infections in humans exposed to animals or raw products.
Erica Pan, MD, MPH, state epidemiologist, said California health officials have monitored about 5,000 people and tested 130 who had potential symptoms. She also added that officials have followed up on numerous wastewater detections as the state battles ongoing outbreaks in dairy cattle and poultry.
Annette Jones, DVM, state veterinarian, said that, of 679 dairy farms that were under quarantine, 66 have been released. The state has been proactively conducting testing at dairy farms, and recently it extended testing to farms in the southern part of the state where the virus was detected within the past 2 weeks. She said the positive test results in the south triggered proactively testing of dairy cattle on the North Coast, which has fewer farms than the Central Valley.
She added that animal health officials don’t yet have a full picture of how the virus is spreading among herds, emphasizing that it can move fast. Jones said about 40 research projects are under way to examine the impact and spread of the virus.
More confirmations in dairy herds and birds
In animal outbreak developments, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today confirmed 9 more H5N1 detections in dairy cattle, all in California. The confirmations push California’s total to 659 and the national total to 875 across 16 states.
Also, APHIS reported two more outbreaks in poultry, which involve two commercial game bird farms in Kansas, one in Doniphan County at a location with 5,700 birds and one in Rooks County at a facility that has 5,300 birds.
