Lack of bird flu testing may be hiding spread of virus on US farms
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By: Melody Schreiber
May 12, 2024
Serious gaps in testing animals and people could be obscuring the true rate of avian influenza cases in the US and make it difficult to understand how the H5N1 virus is spreading – and how to stop it, experts say.
Facing reluctance from farms to test workers and animals, scientists are now turning to experimental studies to understand how H5N1, a highly pathogenic bird flu, is spreading through cows and on to other farms.
The bird flu count among dairy herds in the US continues rising, but infections are more widespread than previously realized, as testing in commercially available milk reveals.
While the risk to people is still low, that could change as the virus mutates, so its continued circulation remains a big concern.
“This epizootic has caught people tremendously by surprise,” said Gregory Gray, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Scientists knew cows could be infected with all four different influenza types, “but we’ve never seen this amount of infection, nor have we seen it move so fast.”
Understanding how the virus moves is essential to stopping it – but testing, which can reveal such transmission patterns, has been slow and inadequate.
A dairy worker in Texas, the only person confirmed to have H5N1 in this outbreak and the first documented case of mammal-to-human transmission of the virus, sought out a test at a local health department, a recent studyshows. The worker reported a form of conjunctivitis that caused their eyes to hemorrhage and turn red.
Yet after the positive test, officials were not able to test any other workers or animals at the farm where the person worked. That makes it difficult for scientists to understand how the virus spread to the worker and whether it has affected other people.
