Re: Phys.org California dairy virus

On 9/26/2024 6:43 PM, RonO wrote:

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-bird-flu-outbreaks-california-dairy.html
 This Phys.org article has the most information on the Calif. situation. It was written earlier this week and has the old number of 34 infected herds (it was actually 36 listed at the USDA site) but now 6 more herds were added yesterday so the situation is even worse than they describe in this article.
 California is doing a better job of detecting herds at this time than other states because they claim to be tracing contacts and testing herds that share workers and equipment with infected herds.  That seems to be the reason that they are detecting so many herds, and they are detecting them before the herds show signs of infection.  It has been known for a long time that dairy workers were likely spreading the virus from farm to farm, but the USDA and CDC have been in deep denial, and refused to do contact tracing to demonstrate that they were wrong.
 This article claims that Calif. has evidence that cattle were illicitly brought back into Calif. from Idaho, but that doesn't make sense because the virus is closest in sequence to Colorado, and Idaho was infected before Colorado.  The Colorado virus is most closely related to the virus isolated from a Michigan dairy worker, so Colorado likely was infected from Michigan (my guess the Colorado virus was transmitted by a migrant infected dairy worker from Michigan because Michigan should not have been exporting cattle at that time due to USDA restrictions).  It will all be worked out once they do a phylogenetic assay of all the infected states.
 They still are refusing to test dairy workers, but they are trying to quarantine the farms and not allowing workers to move from an infected farm to other farms.
 Ron Okimoto
 

In today's update the CDC has announced that 4 more Missouri health care workers that had contact with the hospitalized patient exhibited respiratory symptoms and they are being tested for H5 antibodies.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/h5n1-response-09272024.html
They should also test for N1 antibodies because they know that the Missouri case had a virus with 2 amino acid substitutions in the H5 gene that researchers are claiming reduces H5 antibody neutralization by 10 to 100 fold, so H5 antibodies may not be the best to test for in Missouri.
The USDA is also listing another herd in California identified after the 6 earlier this week bringing this weeks total to 7 in California.
Ron Okimoto