Bird flu linked to dairy farm

In March we reported bird flu for the first time made the jump to us dairy cows now Health officials say it has spread to cats officials say at least 14 cats have died of bird flu in the US the spread raising concerns about the possibility of human human transmission from a future variant so far though only a few human cases have been found that.

Inspired this week's ask the doc question from viewer Colleen who writes quote I would love to hear Dr Daniel's opinions on the current bird fle scared I'm reading a lot of conflicting information ranging from brace yourself it's the next pandemic and has a 50% death rate in humans all the way to it not being a threat and just a variation.

Of the flu and that there really is no reason to be concerned she goes on to ask about symptoms transmission pets and travel so with more we are joined by our Fox 11 medical contributor board certified emergency room Doctor Michael Dano good to have you let's start with the basics and that is what is B bird flu and how did it spread to cattle in.

In the first place so we've been tracking bird flu for a number of decades since the '90s when it emerged in China and there's been outbreaks here and there over the last few years and so what we think happened late 2023 early 2024 was in migrating malard Ducks coming from the south back up north there was probably a crossover event one.

Of those infected Ducks landed on the farm perhaps died in some uh feed that the cattle got into and the virus made the jump and just to remember flu virus is very easy to mutate compared to co it's able to do so a lot faster and so I think that's what what happened and now we have over 53 herds across nine states officially and that's definitely an.

Undercount because a lot of farmers are just not incentivized to report this to the USDA right now and there were some independent researchers that tracked the milk in the Midwest and found that it was prevalent in over 50% of mil milk samples but again this is not infectious virus because it's already gone through pasteurization but this just goes to.

Show you how much more widespread it isn't we thank you so you could drink the milk even though it has bird flu in it right so again going back to what we remember from covid right when we did the PCR test right that was just to test the it would find the the evidence of the virus in in non-infectious fragments doesn't necessarily mean it's infectious.

Contagious fragments so as long as you drink pasteurized milk you should be okay so have humans ever gotten bird flu yeah so over over the years about 9 there's been about 900 cases and the concerning thing is as our viewer as our the one that wrote in said that 50% have died and so it can be very virulent like much more than Co or any other pathogen.

We've seen and so so far this particular strain there's only been one reported case this was a dairy farm worker in Texas who got a very bad case of conjunctivitis from working with infected cows yeah so what does that look like I mean what is so if you've got bird flu how is that different from the regular flu from covid from other.

Things people have experienced I mean we don't really know right now because we just have that one case that a really bad conjunctivitis and so what we don't want is for so the virus right now we know it's present in the milk and it's particularly high concentrations in the utds of dairy farm cows and we think that it's a mechanical process of.

Transformation across the equipment from the collection of the milk and then the processing and it's going from utter to utter and across the cows that are moving across the states and I don't think people won really understand how much her uh cattle cross the interstate lines including internationally so it's already very much widespread so when we.

Talk about flu we think that it's like a contagious respiratory virus but right now it's not killing these cows what we don't want is because there's so much human contact with cows we don't want this virus to develop an affinity for humans and then it further mutates to cause human to human transmission we just don't want to get to that point.

Well and then now it's in the cats and a lot of these cats as far as I was reading they're Barn cats so they're cats that live on these dairy farms and therefore they're pets so that's concerning uh what's the response like in terms of from the government I know the CDC issued a warning today basically for State Health departments to be.

Really Mindful and track influenza right so there's there's multiple levels what's going on the USDA is providing up to $288,000 per Farm to increase their biocurity to sort of track this enact more safety measures but it's really not a lot of money a lot of these Farms have you know from 100 to over 10,000 dairy cows and the CDC is offering $75 only.

Per Farm worker to help in the testing and collection of samples and again that's not too much either and so you know that's why we're talking about Wastewater again the CDC is telling local public health officials to continue to do the flu monitoring cuz as you know we're offseason for flu right now and bird flu is still flu a so if.

We're testing in the ER and we're sending these samples to local public health and they're doing the sub testing um to see what kind of strain it is that could help pick up if it's bird flu well and we should also note that the farm worker who did get bird flu and had pink eye conun he recovered he survived right okay so to answer Colleen the original.

Question for ask the doc should we be concerned about bird flu right now or is it much to do about nothing what's the bottom line answer for her I think we should be concerned I think we should be really keep keeping a close eye on this because you remember back in early 2020 with Co you know asking uh the farmers to control the herds moving across.

States the horse was in this Cas in this sense the cow's already out of the barn right it's almost when we started to do travel bands for covid it's too late and I think you know we're doing the right thing in tracking the Wastewater because I think the farmers right now are just not incentivized to help us out because you have to remember a dairy cow they.

Get 10 to 20 years out of and it's a huge investment for them and so well this is their Lifeline right and so if you start saying you have to take this cow out of the rotation for 30 days which is what it is now that's a huge loss of money so the government really needs to step up their incentivization for the farmers to help us out or we're.

Just going to have to rely on Wastewater testing as it is all right well colen we hope that you're watching we hope you got your answer and if you want your question answered by Dr Danelle send an email to ask the doctor at fox.com include your name and City if you'd like no other personal uh information is needed good conversation Dr Michael.

Danel an important one thank you so much all right

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