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According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the US Centers for Disease Control, H5 influenza, also known as avian influenza or bird flu, has been reported among agricultural workers in Michigan who regularly come into contact with infected animals. Prevention.
It is the second case reported as part of an outbreak of the virus in birds and livestock across the country, and the third human case of bird flu in the US. However, health officials emphasized on Wednesday that the risk to the general public is low.
The person was being monitored for the virus after being exposed to infected cattle, the CDC said in a news release Wednesday. A nasal swab test at the state health department and later at the CDC was found to be free of influenza, but an eye swab came back positive. The man reported only eye symptoms, and they recovered.
Eye symptoms such as redness, swelling and watering were the only ones previously reported. Human affairs In this outbreak, in a dairy farm worker in Texas. The man took antiviral drugs and recovered without any lasting problems.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said: “It is not unexpected that general testing has found humans to be infected.” News release Wednesday. “The data to date indicate that this is a rare infection, with no associated human-to-human transmission.”
The Michigan farm worker is one of 170 people enrolled in an active surveillance program that receives daily text messages from the state health department asking about possible symptoms. When the person showed symptoms, public health officials took samples, provided antiviral drugs to them and their close friends, and urged them to isolate themselves.
The CDC received the samples on Tuesday and reported the test results to Michigan health officials that evening, said CDC Executive Deputy Director Dr. Nirav Shah.
“This issue was not unexpected,” Shah said on Wednesday, emphasizing the agency's efforts to prepare farms for the spread of the virus. It does not change our overall assessment of the risk. What it does do, however, is reinforce the message that the CDC has been sending since late March, which is that stakeholders—environmental health departments, farms, farmworkers and farmworker organizations—need to be proactive but not alarmed by these developments.
“We have not seen evidence of other cases in this area or elsewhere in our surveillance system, let alone human-to-human transmission,” he said. “And that's reassuring, but the public health work hasn't been done. In the coming days, we'll have more information about the genomic sequence or the DNA footprint of this virus. And we'll compare it to the virus from cows caught in Michigan, and we can compare it to the previous human virus in Texas.”
While the eye swab tested positive, the nasal swab tested negative “equally reassuring,” Shah said, indicating that the virus is less likely to be spread through inhalation.
Although traces of the virus were found in samples of dairy products purchased from grocery stores, the US Food and Drug Administration “continues to confirm the safety assessment of the commercial milk supply,” Don Prater, acting director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said Wednesday.
“So far, the overall evidence—including studies on the effectiveness of pasteurization against multiple pathogens, including recent studies on the effectiveness of pasteurization—is overwhelming. [highly pathogenic avian influenza] And eggs are generally used at lower temperatures in dairy products, and negative retail sample results to date – continue to indicate that the commercial milk supply is safe. We continue to strongly advise against the consumption of “raw milk” or unpasteurized milk.
Testing with a variant virus in ground beef found some Live virus It has been found in patties cooked at 120 degrees or less, but at “much, much reduced levels,” said Eric Dable, chief adviser on highly pathogenic avian influenza at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it's not clear if that will happen. It is enough to make a person sick.
Correction: An earlier version of this report misstated the genetic makeup of the virus.