A Michigan dairy worker has been infected with a highly virulent bird flu, the second human case in less than two months of the H5N1 virus circulating among dairy cows.
Federal officials said Wednesday that the case does not change their assessment that the risk to the general public remains low. But in a sign of increased urgency, they announced additional financial incentives for dairy producers to expand testing of cattle and accelerated the timetable to ready nearly 5 million doses of vaccine in case the virus becomes more widespread among people.
The second case did not come as a surprise, officials said, because public health surveillance has been monitoring for additional cases since April, when federal officials announced a dairy worker in Texas was being treated for bird flu shortly after the highly pathogenic avian influenza had been identified in U.S. dairy cattle for the first time.
“We found this case because we were looking for it. We found it because we were prepared,” Nirav Shah, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a news briefing Wednesday.
Shah recognized Michigan officials for their actions. The state has enrolled 170 farmworkers into its active monitoring program, where individuals receive a daily text from the health department asking if they are having symptoms, Shah said. When this worker indicated they were having symptoms, Michigan health officials responded quickly, including with testing, he said.
The Michigan worker, like the one in Texas, experienced mild eye symptoms and has since recovered, according to state officials. A nasal swab of the worker had tested negative for influenza in Michigan, but an eye swab was shipped to the CDC in Atlanta, where it tested positive for avian flu, indicating an eye infection, according to the agency.
Federal health officials said they do not know how the worker became infected or if the individual was wearing protective eye equipment. In dairy farm parlors, workers typically express milk by hand from cow teats before attaching milking equipment. A splash of contaminated milk could get into the eye directly, or by touching the eye with a hand contaminated with virus. Eye infections have been associated with previous human infections of bird flu. Michigan’s health department declined to provide details, citing the need to protect the worker’s privacy.
The Michigan worker’s case – with virus found in the eye swab but none in the nose – is reassuring in one sense, Shah said, because it reduces the likelihood of a respiratory route of transmission. Respiratory spread would make the virus more contagious.
CDC officials said the case underscores the importance of personal protective equipment being used by workers at dairy farms and slaughter facilities. Federal and state officials have made supplies available to dairy farms but have not required their use.
Researchers say the virus had probably been circulating in dairy cattle on a limited basis for about four months before federal officials confirmed the disease in cows in March. The virus has been confirmed in 51 dairy herds in nine states, according to the Agriculture Department. Eighteen of the herds were in Michigan.
The Michigan case marks only the third human case of the H5N1 virus in the United States. In 2022, a poultry worker in Colorado tested positive for the same strain of avian flu. Cases of human illness from H5N1 bird flu have ranged from mild infections – such as eye infections – to more severe illness, such as pneumonia, which has resulted in death in other countries.
Some government officials and public health experts have been frustrated that more livestock herds aren’t being tested and that results of tests that are conducted are not being shared quickly enough. In response, the federal government in May unveiled $98 million in financial incentives aimed at encouraging more testing of cattle and beefing up biosecurity protocols on farms to control the growing outbreak.
On Wednesday, the Agriculture Department announced several incentives for farms without infected dairy cows, including up to $1,500 per farm to implement biosecurity plans and up to $2,000 per farm for veterinarians to collect samples for H5N1 testing. Additionally, all farms will be eligible for a new program to compensate for the milk that their cows don’t produce because of illness.
The federal government is not planning to vaccinate workers and others who come into close contact with dairy cattle, officials said. But Dawn O’Connell, head of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, said the agency has found a manufacturer to prepare 4.8 million doses of bird flu vaccine, a process that would take “a couple of months.”
Factors that could prompt a vaccination campaign include increased transmission from animal to human, evidence of human-to-human transmission or a human case of H5N1 without any link to a dairy farm, Shah said.
The CDC and public health officials plan to continue enhanced flu monitoring through the summer to detect rare cases of human H5N1 infection.
(c) 2024, The Washington Post · Lena H. Sun, Rachel Roubein
WEF Yuval Noah Harari (Professor in Heb. University, no less) : “What do we need so many humans for?”
Yep, the evil thugs directing our governments follow this attitude that there are far too many people in the world and that, to “save” the world, we must somehow sharply lower the world’s population. One of the key ways to do that would be to simply take away all the food, and then, as there will be no food around to eat, everyone will starve & die! If they cannot do quite ALL that, if they can take away only, for example, 75% of the food, that would also be “pretty good,” for then 75% of the people will starve & die.
So, especially in these last few years, under the direction of these thugs, many — obviously outright sinister — efforts have been made to drastically reduce the amount of food that will be available. Numerous farms have been shut down, countless food processing plants have been destroyed in mysterious fires, large herds of cattle have suddenly died, large flocks of chickens have been declared “diseased” & “dangerous” and thus killed. Almost every week, the “inspectors” announce some kind of “new” “virus” that is “infecting” everything.
We must certainly beg Hashem to save us all from these diabolical plans.
So they’re going to do to the cows what they did to the chickens and that is kill All cattle within 20 mi of where the flu was found. That has absolutely positively caused egg prices to go up. When egg prices go up the price on all foods go up because of so many products that are made with eggs, one way or another. If they do this with cattle, it’s not just the milk industry and everything that has milk or milk derivatives etc, it’s anything related to cattle. Meat prices will go up! All the byproducts of cattle production, for everything that cattle is used for outside of food will go up. And the problem is we have idiots in Washington who are more than happy to do this because they think with their posterior.
Thos is part of the plan of stopping all farms and forcing people to eat processed factory foods
Yes, this is exactly what the program is. The processed factory foods they want to force us to eat are full of all kinds of artificial substances and poison chemicals that are severely harmful to us.
Part of this program is that they want to especially outlaw all organic food [produce that was grown without pesticide poisons and its DNA was not changed, i.e., NOT GMO (Genetically Modified)]. They further want to outlaw individuals growing their own food. So, if a person wants to still do that, he will need to place his food plants “hidden” in between and underneath his other garden bushes.
Last month, one guy (supposedly) got this (supposed) Bird-Flu disease and now, this month, a second guy (supposedly) got it. In other words, in a period of two months, two people (supposedly) got this (supposed) Bird-Flu disease. This is what they are all hyped up about: In two months, two people sick.
When they put out the Holy, Holy, Holy Covid Vaccines, in just the FIRST TWO HOURS of their being used, over TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE were already dead!! And, in the NEXT TWO MONTHS, over TWO MILLION PEOPLE were already dead!!
This is obviously just an excuse for them to come out with another one of their “mRNA” or “nRNA” or “zenRNA” vaccines and force us all take it for this new coming SCAMdemic of theirs, in which they think they will rake in a lot of $$$$$$$$. The Covid-19 thingy pretty much fizzled out a while ago, so they got to whip up something else now to get us all scared and keep themselves going.
But the democrats lectured us lemechels that vaccines are safe and effective safe and effective safe and effective safe and effective safe and effective safe and effective. Everything will be just fine. Stop being a rodef already.
This Bird-Flu problem is another ploy to vilify raw milk and claim that it carries “disease” and is “dangerous.”
OF COURSE, THE TRUTH IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE!!
Please see the (org) website called RawMilkInstitute which explains how raw milk has numerous key substances and nutrients that greatly fight off infection and disease. But when milk is pasteurized, it looses these many benefits.