California Dairy Farm Workers Monitored for Bird Flu After Two Test Positive

October 5 :
Two human cases of bird flu were verified on October 3, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a result, health officials in California are closely watching additional exposed workers for any symptoms.

Two California employees are among sixteen people in the US who have tested positive for avian flu this year. Fifteen of those instances occurred in people who worked on farms that had contaminated chickens or cows. The danger of avian flu to the broader population is minimal, according to public health authorities. According to Nirav Shah, principal deputy director at the CDC, during a press call on October 4, the affected workers only had conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye, and did not report any respiratory symptoms.

The United States Department of Agriculture reports that 56 dairy herds in California have tested positive for avian flu this year, out of more than 250 in 14 states. According to Shah, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are still looking into the possibility that any healthcare professionals in Missouri were infected with avian flu after one individual tested positive.

He warned that it may be another two weeks before the agency's testing of seven blood samples from healthcare personnel exposed to the ill person could reveal whether or not they had previously contracted the virus. During the conversation, Eric Deeble, the deputy under secretary for marketing and regulatory programs at USDA, confirmed that the bird flu strain found on the two California farms is identical to the one found on dairy farms in other states. As a result, the implicated farms have been quarantined.

Deeble added that the state's obligatory bulk milk testing has been successful as there is now only one positive herd in Colorado, which was a hotspot for avian flu in the spring among dairy farms. Chief Medical Officer Steve Grube of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition stated on the call that pasteurized dairy products are still safe to eat.

In order to gain a better understanding of the presence of the avian flu virus in the milk supply, the FDA said on October 4 that it will shortly conduct a study of raw cow's milk at certain dairy plants.