The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report Thursday saying it detected bird flu infections among livestock veterinarians tested last fall, including two people with no known exposure to animals with the virus.
Bird flu has infected nearly 70 people in the U.S., with one death, since last April. Most of those infections have occurred among farmworkers exposed to infected poultry or cows.
The CDC reported that it found the virus in three of 150 veterinarians tested in September 2024. Two of those veterinarians had no contact with animals known to be sick with bird flu. In addition, one of them did not work in a state where bird flu had been detected among livestock.
None of the veterinarians reported flu-like symptoms or conjunctivitis, which has been a common symptom of bird flu among infected farmworkers, the report said.
Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said the lack of information about the prevalence of human cases is frustrating.
“We need much more rigorous surveillance,” he said. “We need to continue to look, especially in the poultry and dairy industry.”
Bird flu may be more widespread
The findings suggest there may be infected dairy cattle in more states than currently known, the study said.
Bird flu has infected nearly 1,000 dairy herds in 16 states, most recently California and Nevada, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency said Feb. 5 that it had detected a second strain of bird flu among dairy herds in Nevada.
Since December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been stepping up implementation of a mandatory national program of testing milk for avian influenza.
Meanwhile, for months, human and animal health experts have warned about underreporting of cases of the disease. But in some cases, farmers and workers have resisted testing.
On the one hand, farmers fear the loss of income if their dairy herds are quarantined after a positive result. On the other hand, workers worry about the loss of pay due to mandatory isolation and absences from work.
Source: Leah Douglas, Tom Polansek, Susan Heavey, Chris Reese, Bill Berkrot and Aurora Ellis | Notícias Agrícolas
