United States: According to official reports, the spread of infection among cows has already increased. Furthermore, not only domestic cats have been affected, but skunks, large mountain lions, and red foxes have also too.
Case of Infection in Human
Nevertheless, even though the highly transmissible avian flu occurs in multiple mammals across the United States, only one human case has been officially reported to date.
Furthermore, there could be a reason that more cases are not detected in people due to the scarce testing in the labs.
State administrations and farm owners side-stepped the participation of Centers for Disease Control teams in the field surveys that would help in understanding a clearer picture of the potential transmission of the virus to humans.
This could potentially hamper the federal personnel responding to the pandemic. More than 80 percent of experts agree that it is the biggest test for pandemic preparedness systems after Covid-19.
The latest patient has had a full recovery after he/she experienced no symptoms other than eye redness. In bird flu, an estimated half of the infected known people attend the mortuary, thus pointing out how fatal the disease is to society if it spreads widely.
In CDC terms, authorities do not have the power to conduct widespread investigations on the ground without the invitation of the states that have confirmed infected cattle, but these states insist that they have not even made an invitation.
On the side of the private dairy farms, there would also be a difficult process of receiving CDC investigators since the business is very reliant on hired immigrant workers who frequently boast about the loss of earnings if they test positive. Farms,, on the other hand,, are sometimes afraid of digging for cows that have fallen ill because of a chance that this may cause more harm to their small-sized businesses with low-profit margins.
Abraar Karan, an infectious disease researcher at Stanford University, said, “The CDC is not able to go in and do the type of testing and investigative work they need to do.”
Sam Scarpino, a professor at Northeastern University, who helped lead pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation during the coronavirus pandemic, even added, “We’re playing with fire,” and, “We’re really not doing the surveillance to say that it’s not here.”
About On-the-ground bird flu testing
According to CDC Director Mandy Cohen, the agency has prepared itself to conduct on-the-ground bird flu testing and other forms of surveillance.
Cphen said, “We are ready to deploy,” and, “We have been for weeks,” as Bloomberg News reported.
So far, a total of nine states have been infected by an infection spread in cattle, not excluding- Texas, New Mexico, Michigan, Kansas, Idaho, Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Dakota, according to the CDC.