New H5N1 Trials Target Dairy Workers Amid Testing Reluctance

New H5N1 Trials Target Dairy Workers
New H5N1 Trials Target Dairy Workers. Credit | REUTERS

United States: US health agencies are launching new cycle of trials on dairy industry’s employees and their products in the view of possible H5N1 bird flu effect.

More about the news

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is teaming up with Michigan to start one of its most eagerly expected studies to determine whether employees who had been in contact with infected cattle had themselves contracted the disease.

To date, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is field testing a process called flash pasteurization following recent research that has questioned whether this approach eliminates the infectious virus in milk.

More about the projects

The projects are among a series of new research by federal agencies declared Tuesday to elaborate on the transmission patterns of H5N1 bird flu that surprisingly crossed over from birds to dairy cattle at the beginning of the year.

Over 120 herds of cows in 12 states of the US have been confirmed to be infected with the highly contagious disease after a number of case reports pointed to raw milk as the source of infection as from late March, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) revealed.

According to Dr. Eric Deeble, who is the acting senior adviser for highly pathogenic avian influenza at the USDA, “We know this to be spread by contact with milk,” as CNN Health reported.

Deeble stated that at the beginning of the look, the movement of cattle, specifically cattle driving, contributed to the infection’s spread.

However, since the USDA required animals to be tested before they could travel state-to-state in late April, the virus has been transported on relevant equipment and employees from one farm to another, according to a recently conducted epidemiological analysis by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, or MDARD.

MDARD Director Dr. Tim Boring said, “We know that milk has really high viral loads, and so when we’re looking at transmission patterns,that’s a really high risk, it seems,” as CNN Health reported.

Reluctant Dairy farmers to test their herds

There have been cases in which dairy farmers are not willing to allow government officials to test their farms for widespread testing of their animals, and farm workers are also not keen to be tested even if they show signs of the flu.

Advocates have argued that the workers are reluctant to test since this would imply that they could lose their source of income.

Last week, Michigan state announced it would compensate as much as USD 28,000 per farm to 20 dairy farms, declaring it would get involved in research. That the grant is over and above funds the federal government is committing.

On Tuesday, the CDC said that it collaborated with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a trial to screen the blood of farm workers for H5N1 antibodies.

According to Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, “The point of this study is to determine if there is an asymptomatic infection” of workers, exposed themselves to infected cows with the H5N1 virus, as CNN Health reported.