The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today confirmed 62 more avian flu outbreaks in dairy cattle, all involving California herds. The latest detections lift the state’s total since the end of August to 398 and the national total to 612.
California is the nation’s largest dairy producer, and outbreaks in the Central Valley have now affected nearly one-third of the state’s estimated 1,300 herd.
As H5N1 bird flu continues to spread around the US, health officials recently found that 7 percent of dairy workers tested on farms in two states had evidence of recent infection — and some had signs of infection even when they didn’t feel sick.
...finding bird flu in a pig raises worries that the virus may be hitting a stepping stone to becoming a bigger threat to people, said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Brown University pandemic researcher.
