Health officials announced six more human cases Friday as H5N1 avian influenza spreads among dairy herds and birds migrating south in California. This includes five cases in California and one case in Oregon, the first in the state.
A seventh presumptive case has occurred in California and is awaiting confirmation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All reported cases have been described as mild, and each person is believed to have contracted the virus from infected livestock or poultry. In California, an outbreak occurred among dairy workers. In Oregon, the patient was a poultry worker.
California epidemiologist Erica Pan said that while today’s announcement of five new cases may sound like a sudden explosion or acceleration of cases, it is a product of the state’s reporting deadline. said. On Wednesday, after California’s reporting deadline, the CDC confirmed three cases. The remaining two cases were confirmed on Thursday, a day when California does not report new cases.
Additionally, Monday was a holiday, so reporting was further delayed.
“I still refer to these sporadic infections as zoonotic or human transmission, but there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission yet,” she said. “These are all workers who are at risk of exposure based on their work-related exposures.”
In the Oregon case, the person contracted the disease from a previously reported outbreak at an infected commercial poultry operation in Clackamas County. “There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission and the risk to the public is low,” the Oregon Health Authority said in a statement.
The agency said the man made a full recovery and was treated with the antiviral drug oseltamivir. Health authorities also prescribed antiviral drugs to people who lived in the same house as the patient.
Since March, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced that 52 people have been infected with the H5N1 virus. Of these, 30 cases were from dairy cows and 21 from poultry. The source of the other case in Missouri remains unknown.
Additionally, a British Columbia teenager was infected with an unknown source of infection and was hospitalized in critical condition as of Friday.
There have been 26 confirmed cases in California, including five recently. All had contact with infected dairy cows.
WastewaterScan, an infectious disease surveillance network led by researchers at Stanford University and Emory University and supported by the labs of Verily, Alphabet Inc.’s life sciences organization, is surveying 28 wastewater treatment plants in California. Tracking. All but seven contain detectable amounts of H5. The source of each system is unknown, but experts say it could come from unpasteurized milk, wild bird droppings or discarded contaminated animal products.
Cities and municipalities that have detected the virus since early November include Gilroy, Indio, Lompoc, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, Marina, Merced, Napa, San Francisco, Ontario, Palo Alto, Redwood City, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Southeast San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Turlock, and Vallejo.
