Study Suggests Undetected Bird Flu Virus Cases Pose A Widespread Concern

The CDC relies on surveillance data to make policy decisions. For example, despite having bird flu vaccines available, the agency has chosen not to offer them to farmworkers, citing the low number of reported cases.

However, bird flu virus testing among farmworkers is uncommon, making Gregory Gray’s research notable. His study is the first to examine signs of undiagnosed prior infections in people who had been exposed to sick dairy cattle and had since recovered.

Gray’s team identified past bird flu infections in workers from two dairy farms in Texas that experienced outbreaks earlier this year.

By analyzing blood samples from 14 farmworkers who had not been previously tested, they detected antibodies in two of them.

This detection rate of nearly 15% came from just two out of over 170 dairy farms affected by bird flu across 13 states this year.

One worker who tested positive for antibodies had been using medication for a persistent cough when he agreed to a blood test in April. The other, who had recently recovered from an unexplained respiratory illness, reported that other untested farmworkers around her had also been sick.

Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Influenza at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, indicated that these findings support his concerns that the 13 bird flu cases reported by the CDC this year are likely an understatement.

Farmworker’s Testing: A Major Concern

While the study is limited in scope, it highlights the urgent need to address reports of undiagnosed illnesses among farmworkers and veterinarians.

The CDC has cautioned that co-infection with seasonal flu and bird flu could lead to genetic exchanges between the viruses, potentially enabling bird flu to spread among humans as easily as seasonal flu.

Currently, there is no evidence that such genetic exchanges are occurring, and asymptomatic cases of bird flu seem to be rare.

A related Michigan study, reported by the CDC on July 19, found no indications of undetected infections among dairy farm workers who had not shown symptoms. Researchers tested blood samples from 35 workers at farms that had experienced outbreaks in Michigan, and none had signs of missed infections.

Gray cautioned that without additional aid for farmworkers and enhanced cooperation between the government and the livestock sector, the U.S. risks remaining uninformed about this virus.

Breakdown of Communication

According to a KFF analysis, around 20% of livestock farm workers lack insurance, and a similar proportion have annual household incomes below $40,000.

The three farmworkers reported that neither their employers nor state health officials had informed them about bird flu, nor were they offered testing. Meanwhile, the CDC recently highlighted its partnership with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, noting that bird flu-related posts have reached over 10 million views on digital platforms.

Bethany Boggess Alcauter, who leads research and public health initiatives at the National Center for Farmworker Health, emphasized that online outreach is not reaching farmworkers who are offline, do not speak English or Spanish, or lack smartphones and internet connectivity. 

Flu surveillance
Nothing odd has turned up there. It also analyzes a subset of patient samples for unusual types of flu viruses. Since late February, the agency has assessed about 36,000 samples. No bird flu.

The study also analyzes a huge patient samples to detect unusual flu viruses. As per the data collected from last February, the agency has already detected around 35,000 samples having no bird flu viruses.

A senior epidemiologist looks like to miss out as many health threats as they check quite a small number of infections. As per the data, up to 20,000 workers presently work on farms with livestock in the US which covers just 0.1% of the entire US population.

Troubling Signs

The current research in this regard has warned that H5N1 bird flu virus has become quite infectious to human beings and other mammals. This has happened in the last couple of years though. And this needs to be constantly monitored to check the spread of the virus in dairy farms.

The current report suggests that the bird flu virus is currently spreading mainly through milk and other such items. However, some earlier reports suggest that the virus spread through air which can be quite dangerous.

They also conducted some experiments on cattles, particularly cows who wer found infected with the virus. Most infected cows were found coughing in close association to another.

This ahows that cows also cough. As per a new study from Texas, cattle were mainly found coughing mainly during outbreaks on their farms. They even showed some other sort of resapiratory issues. In another incident, around 20 cats out of 40 in one farm died suddenly after an outbreak. It all happened due to the bird flu virus.

Most cases of infection among people from animals were because of the bird flu virus. Initially, it was highlighted that the virus minutely spread from person to person.