Re: Two poultry workers in Arizona with H5N1

On 12/10/2024 5:45 PM, RonO wrote:

On 12/9/2024 6:29 PM, RonO wrote:

On 12/9/2024 2:57 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona- breaking/2024/12/06/ pinal-county-workers-confirmed-as-first-human- cases-of-bird- flu/76827272007/
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This hasn't been confirmed to be the dairy virus, nor have the cases been confirmed by the CDC, but if it is the Dairy virus they should be looking for infected dairy herds in Arizona.  Poultry farms get infected by nearby dairies.  The Dairy virus is spreading among dairy cattle and not among wild birds.  Wild birds have been infected, but they seem to die around the farms where they got infected.
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Ron Okimoto
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https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/nevada-reports- its- first-avian-flu-detection-dairy-cattle-virus-hits-iowa
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Nevada is admitting to it's first dairy infection.  There are only 20 dairy herds in the state, but the largest herd has 32,000 cows on it. One herd North of Las Vegas went down.  Two more commercial poultry flocks went down in Iowa and California.  California doesn't have much of an excuse.  They know that they need to keep dairy workers off the poultry farms, but my guess is that quarantine is still "voluntary" and not enforced.  Dairy workers have rights, but they have to keep other herds and poultry flocks from being infected.  Poultry flocks get depopulated, but infected dairy farms keep producing milk.
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Still no results from the CDC's claims to start testing dairy workers back in early Nov. in order to detect infected and isolate and treat them with anti-viral drugs.
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Ron Okimoto
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 The dairy herd count is now up to 742 nationally with over 520 of those from California.  21 California herds were added today and the one herd from Nevada.
 https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/mammals.html
 California is just sad.  Once they had confirmed contact tracing was identifying more infected herds they should have restricted movement of dairy workers from working at more than one farm.  They would have obviously prevented a lot of poultry infections and other dairy herd infections.  They had already restricted movement of cattle between farms, but refused to restrict dairy worker movements between farms. Now 40% of the dairy herds have been found to be infected. The same is likely true for all other states with infected dairy herds that did not try to identify all their infected herds and did not restrict the movement of dairy workers between farms.
 California should also not have stopped testing dairy workers, and the CDC program for increased testing of dairy workers seems to have never started after announcing it in early November in response to the findings that 7% of dairy workers had been found to be or have been infected in the Michigan and Colorado study.  It was actually more than 7% because the CDC included 39 individuals that were tested because they had not shown symptoms.  These 39 were the first group tested.  The 8 positives came from the random sample collected as they came to workers on various farms with out regard to whether they had shown symptoms or not.  So the positive rate was closer to 10% than 7%.
 The virus has been mutating in cattle for so long, that they likely have to create new H5 antigens to test for antibodies, like they had to do for the Missouri case.
 If it is taking weeks to get results confirmed by the CDC it is senseless to use the test results to start treating the infected with antivirals, as the CDC claimed that they were going to do.
 Ron Okimoto
 

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/mammals.html
31 more herds in California in the latest update by the USDA.  The total heard count now 774 (559 from California).  More poultry flocks in 5 states have gone down.  Over 15 million chickens and turkeys lost since September.
The two Arizona poultry workers could not be confirmed to have had H5N1 by the CDC, and they are being listed as probably infected.
Ron Okimoto