Concern in the United States over A/H5N1 avian influenza. After the virus was found positive in dairy cows in recent days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that a person who had had contact with the cattle was also infected with the virus. The patient reported conjunctivitis as his only symptom and is currently in isolation and being treated with antivirals.
Avian flu alert, the virus could pass from man to man by Donatella Zorzetto 27 February 2024
According to the CDC, the risk to the general population continues to remain low. The alarm about the spread of the avian influenza virus in dairy cattle was raised on March 25, when the virus was found in unpasteurized milk from two farms in Kansas and one in Texas and from swabs carried out in a fourth ranching in Texas. On the 29th, new positive cases were found in a farm in Michigan.
Pregliasco: “No alarmism”
An opinion not to create alarmism is also shared by the virologist Fabrizio Pregliasco. If in the USA there is concern about a highly virulent H5N1 strain that runs among dairy cows in various states of the country, it should be considered that the passage of the pathogen to mammals “is already established”, specifies the university professor State of Milan. “We already know that different mammals can become infected,” he recalls. “However, they are not preferential hosts of avian viruses – he points out – and in many cases they do not present symptoms. However, every species has receptors for these viruses, even us humans”.
And contagion
These infections in humans “are isolated cases to date – underlines Pregliasco – limited to people who have had close contact with infected animals”. According to Pregliasco “the positive aspect must be seen: thanks to the attention of the laboratory networks, and a greater sensitivity which in some ways we can read as a positive legacy of Covid, we are also able to identify cases which, if there had not been this be careful, they would have been archived as ‘trivial colds’. It means that the warning system works and is very, very sensitive. Let’s manage this information in positive and proactive terms”, is the virologist’s invitation.
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Genetic analysis
Genetic analysis concluded that the virus that affected cattle is the same one that is widespread in birds globally; furthermore, it has not undergone changes that would make it more suitable for dissemination in humans or more resistant to available antiviral treatments.
For the CDC, the human infection confirmed yesterday (the second in the United States, after a case in 2022) “does not change the human health risk assessment of H5N1 avian influenza for the general US public, which the CDC consider it low,” we read in a note.
Identikit of the new pandemic, the danger comes from these viruses by Donatella Zorzetto 12 March 2024
Milk is also considered safe, “because the products are pasteurized before entering the market”. Attention, however, should be paid to “people with close or prolonged and unprotected exposure to infected birds or other animals (including livestock), or to environments contaminated by infected birds or other animals”: these “are at greater risk of infection”, they conclude the CDC.