2024-04-19 14:28:07
Milk from cows contaminated with avian flu in the United States has high concentrations of H5N1 virus. Therefore, the WHO recommended this Friday to apply common sense food safety measures such as the use of pasteurized milk.
For now, studies are underway to try to determine how long the virus can survive in milk and the World Health Organization has called for vigilance.
“While studies are ongoing, it is important for people to practice safe dietary practices including consuming only pasteurized milk.”said Dr Wenqing Zhang, who leads the global influenza program at WHO, at the regular UN briefing in Geneva.
“We are now seeing several cow herds affected in a growing number of US states, showing a new step in the spread of the virus to mammals“, underlined the WHO official.
No risk for the commercial dairy circuit
Health authorities in Texas in the southern United States, where the first case of cow-to-human transmission was discovered, stressed that there was no risk for the commercial dairy circuit, due to the obligation to destroy milk from sick cows. Pasteurization, which involves heating the milk, also kills the virus.
Human infections with the A(H5N1) virus remain rare and are linked to exposure to infected animals and environments.
Between the start of 2023 and April 1, 2024, the WHO said it recorded a total of 889 human cases of avian flu in 23 countries, including 463 deaths, bringing the case fatality rate to 52%.
More species
Avian influenza A (H5N1) first appeared in 1996, but since 2020 the number of outbreaks in birds has exploded and an increasing number of mammal species have been affected.
Last month, cows and goats joined the list – a surprising development for experts because they are not considered susceptible to this type of flu.
U.S. authorities said earlier this month that a person working on a dairy farm in Texas was recovering from bird flu after exposure to livestock.
“Texas case is first human case infected with bird flu from a cow“, Dr. Zhang recalled.
“Bird-to-cow, cow-to-cow, and cow-to-bird transmission have also been recorded during current outbreaks, suggesting that the virus may have found other transmission routes than we previously imagined” she said.
This was only the second human case to test positive for bird flu in the United States.
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