Avian Flu Likely Circulating In Dairy Cattle Four Months Before Detection, USDA Says

CNN (5/2, Goodman) reports, “Bird flu was probably circulating in dairy cows for at least four months before it was confirmed to be the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, according to a new analysis of genomic data by scientists at the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal Disease Center.” The report “follows a similar analysis by an independent international group of almost two dozen evolutionary and molecular biologists who quickly analyzed raw genome sequences uploaded by the government to a server maintained by the National Library of Medicine.” So far, “tests of milk from retail stores have shown inert remnants of the virus in about 1 in 5 samples, the US Food and Drug Administration reported last week, suggesting that the infection had become widespread.” Reuters (5/2, Polansek, Steenhuysen) reports, “Veterinarians observed dairy cattle displaying unexplained reductions in milk production and changes in milk quality, along with reduced feed consumption, starting in January, according to the paper. It was published [on] an open-access preprint server for the biological sciences called bioRxivon.”