Colorado Human Bird Flu Cases Being Tied to Heat Wave
5 workers were stricken after culling an infected flock without proper personal protection. Meanwhile, the virus has been detected in Oklahoma dairy herd.
The last time we checked on the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), otherwise known as “bird flu”, a couple of dairy workers had contacted a disease and the “human fatality” case turned out to be fake news.
The bird flu has yet to be the break-out pandemic for this election cycle. However, people are still getting infected.
This week, it is being reported that a spate of cases among Colorado poultry workers culling an infected flock is being tied to the regional heat wave.
Searing heat may have played a role in the infections of five workers who fell ill last week while culling a large flock of chickens infected with the H5N1 virus in Colorado, health officials said Tuesday.
“At the time transmission is thought to have occurred, Colorado was experiencing 104-plus-degree heat,” and it was probably hotter inside the barns, said Dr. Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is investigating the outbreak along with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
This made the use of personal protective equipment a challenge, Shah said.
In addition, to bring down temperatures in the sweltering barns, large industrial fans were blowing, moving air as well as dust and feathers. Feathers from infected birds are known to carry the H5N1 virus.
Subsequently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deployed a nine-member field team to help the state manage the outbreak. Based on reports, it appears “red eye” appears to be the most prominent symptom of human infections.
Based on current information, [the CDC] said it believes the risk to the public to be low.
The CDC said it had not seen any unexpected increases in flu activity otherwise in Colorado, or other states with bird flu outbreaks in cows and poultry.
Workers were culling chickens at a commercial egg facility with a bird flu outbreak in northeast Colorado, the state said, without naming the facility.
Colorado reported an outbreak of avian flu at a 1.8 million-bird egg farm in Weld County on July 8, according to the state’s agriculture department. Workers at the farm presented mild symptoms, from conjunctivitis to respiratory signs, according to the state health department.
Meanwhile, cases are still being observed in cattle. Oklahoma has reported bird flu in a herd of dairy cattle and has become the 13th state to find the virus.
The positive sample of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was collected by a farm in April and recently submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) for testing. The herd has fully recovered and the farm has not reported any other cases of HPAI, the department said.
“The commercial milk supply remains safe due to both federal animal health requirements and pasteurization,” the department said.
The U.S. confirmed the first case in a dairy herd on March 25 and a dairy worker in Texas tested positive on April 1, raising concerns about the virus’ spread among animals and humans.
Other states that have reported infected herds are Wyoming, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota and Texas.
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Comments
It’s obviously Trump’s fault for not fully funding something between 2016 and 2020.
Here’s the thing; chickens quit laying eggs if exposed to too-high (or too low) temperatures. No eggs means no revenue. Large chicken facilities are already equipped to deal with summer temperatures because… no eggs means no revenue. So, no, it wasn’t over 104° in that barn, or there would have been mass die-off just from the heat.
The “infected flock” that was being culled was mostly healthy, and I cast a skeptical eye on the PCR tests that are being done to conclude that these workers are infected. And its more than coincidental that suddenly in 2024 we’re seeing all these avian-to-mammal transmissions that never occurred before but now are occurring all over the country, supposedly.
The workers may have tested positive for infection with H5N1, but their “red eye” could just be a reaction to the blowing dust, that always carries its own load of bacteria and allergens.
So, it could be globull warming? Are you saying there’s a chance?
Last week I heard a local weather person refer to the heat wave in the PNW as a “climate event.” Anyone elsewhere hear such a claim? I imagine local news outlets have received their marching orders to use this term as often as possible. If the term means anything, it means “weather,” as all weather is a result of the current climate, and is therefore a “climate event.”