The US Department of Agriculture announced on Wednesday that four dairy budds in Nevada recently decided to have been infected with H5N1 bird flu in fact were infected with Another tension of the virus Then the past year is circulating in cows.
The discovery, experts said, make it clear that this virus from cows will be more difficult than the USDA has estimated.
The version in the herds of Nevada is one that circulates in wild birds. It is also the version behind the serious infection of a teenager in British Columbia, Canada, last year, and a fatal infection in Louisiana last month.
Since the beginning of the H5N1 outbreak in dairy cows, the USDA has insisted that all infections – 957 herds in 16 states so far – go back to a single introduction of the virus in cows in cows at the end of 2023 or early 2024, possibly in Texas . Break the transmission chain, argued the desk, and the outbreak would end.
This new finding, as a result of a national strategy for testing milk tests that the USDA established at the end of 2024, shows that what has ever happened has happened – making the prospects for inclusion DIM appear, seen how much H5N1 virus on This moment in wild birds is circulating in wild birds in several parts of the country.
“I am not surprised that we will see extra introductions, especially in view of the very widespread nature of H5N1 in migrating water birds in North America,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Research and Policy of the University of Minnesota Stat. “From the point of view of Inladiation, it simply indicates that this will not burn itself.”
The version of the virus circulating in cows is Clade 2.3.4.4b Genotype B3.13. The version in the Nevada cows was genotype D1.1.
The USDA said in a statement posted on its website that the finding the department did not reconsider its approach.
“The detection does not change from USDAs [H5N1] Extermination strategy and is proof of the strength of our national strategy for testing milk, “said it.
This is a developing story.