Now that bird flu is spreading among cows, scientists worry where H5N1 will jump next
On March 25, American officials published an urgent announcement: Dairy cows in Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico were falling sick.
The cows had low appetites, and produced less milk than normal. Some farms also discovered wild bird carcasses on their grounds. Tests on a cow throat swab and raw milk samples all confirmed an unusual finding: for the first time, cattle were catching a dangerous form of bird flu.
Within days, highly pathogenic avian flu — a type of influenza A known as H5N1 — was identified in at least a dozen herds across six states, from Texas in the south, up to Michigan and Idaho on the Canadian border.
Louise Moncla, an avian influenza researcher and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was stunned.
“The overwhelming feeling that all of us have is that this is mostly just incredibly strange,” she said. “To our knowledge, I’ve never seen a cow be infected with any influenza A viruses.”
But the curveball wasn’t entirely unexpected. And it may be a harbinger of more species-jumps to come, including the rising possibility of H5N1 appearing in pigs — which could offer it a new route to better adapt to infect humans, inching the world closer to a bird flu pandemic.
Sporadic human cases — and deaths — are also occurring around the world. The second-ever human infection in the U.S. was reported just days ago in Texas, in an individual with mild symptoms who’d had direct exposure to cattle. |Read more https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/avian-flu-h5n1-cow-outbreaks-1.7162626| cbc.ca/news/health/avian-flu-h…
#cdnpoli #health #environment #disease #virus #H1N1 #influenza A #human danger #infectious diseases
