Re: Two more California Dairy workers confirmed to be H5N1 infected

On 12/3/2024 8:40 AM, RonO wrote:

On 12/2/2024 6:35 PM, RonO wrote:

On 12/2/2024 1:40 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/mammals.html
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I can't find any announcement, but the CDC has increased the California numbers by 2 today (Dec. 2).  The USDA has increased the number of herds infected to 689, but I do not know what states are affected because they haven't updated their data sheet.  It still has the old Nov 27 confirmed data that they put up last Friday.
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Ron Okimoto
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https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-29/raw-farm-sales- suspended
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Another batch of raw milk products came up positive from the same dairy that tested positive.  Initial bulk milk tank testing was negative, but the farm has identify several asymptomatic positive cows.  So the farm was infected and didn't know it.
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https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/california- reports- h5n1-more-retail-raw-milk-virus-infects-2-more-dairy
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CIDRAP notes that two more California dairy workers have been confirmed.   California isn't announcing positives until they are confirmed and it takes the CDC quite a while to confirm cases.  They may still be working on the original batch of samples submitted by California around a month ago.  I recall a news article that claimed that 39 samples had been submitted, and the CDC has only released 30 positives and 1 that could not be confirmed.  That would mean that the CDC is still working on 8 samples.  It could be that the article got the numbers wrong, or I misinterpreted number of workers tested and submitted.  California stopped announcing how many workers that they had tested.
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CIDRAP also claims more poultry flocks have gone down in 3 states, but doesn't name the states or the size of the poultry flocks.  Washington should have identified their positive dairy herds by now, and it is pretty sad that they haven't bothered to test their dairies.
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Ron Okimoto
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It was actually 6 states that had poultry flocks go down.  All 6 should be looking for their infected dairy herds to try to stop the spread. Utah was stupid and stopped testing after they found 8 infected herds in the same county as the infected poultry farm.  They knew that they should have implemented contact tracing or bulk milk tank testing like California to find all the other infected herds, but like all the other states they went into denial.  Now another poultry farm in another Utah county has gone down with the dairy virus.  More poultry workers are being exposed to the virus, and it could have been prevented.  The price of eggs is going up because of the stupid way in which the USDA and CDC have handled this fiasco.
 The stupidest thing is that the USDA and CDC are letting the states get away with this stupid behavior because they keep calling the dairy epidemic "avian influenza" when they know that it has been primarily a dairy infection since March.
 Dairies are spreading the virus because dairy cattle shed huge amounts of virus, and dairy workers get infected and go to other farms (including poultry farms) and infect the new farms.  Transport of cattle has been limited to tested and negative animals since April, but the virus still spreads to states that did not get cattle and poultry farms that obviously did not get cattle.  It isn't rocket science, but the CDC and USDA have refused to face reality since the beginning when the first dairy worker was confirmed to be infected and was shedding live culturable virus.
 Ron Okimoto
 

  USDA had posted 6 more dairies (total 488), but the sample numbers go to 508, so there are more in the que.
It has likely been over 2 weeks since the USDA was supposed to start bulk milk tank testing, and those results should be coming in.  27% of the California dairies are already known to be positive.  The raw milk issue indicates that bulk milk tank testing can miss positive herds.  I do not know how they are going to get around this, but they claim that the herds should be tested on a routine basis, hopefully around once a week, so even if they miss a herd it will likely test positive in a couple of testings if there are infected cattle on the farm.
Ron Okimoto