By Kirk Maltais
California has declared a state of emergency due to an increased number of H5N1 bird flu cases that have been detected in the state's dairy cows.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that the declaration allows the state to organize a comprehensive response to H5N1, otherwise known as bird flu. The state is focusing on exposure via dairy farms, and is issuing protective gear to at-risk farm workers and seeking to educate the public.
In August, bird flu was confirmed in a dairy cow in central California, with 33 human cases of bird flu in 2024 coming from exposure to dairy farms in California, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control. In total, 61 human cases of bird flu have been reported across the country this year, according to the CDC.
So far, no person-to-person spread has been detected in California. However, Newsom's state of emergency comes on the heels of a report from the CDC about the first instance of a severe illness reported in a human related to bird flu. A man in Louisiana was exposed to bird flu through dead or ill birds in his backyard flock, the CDC confirmed on Friday.
Other details are scant, with the CDC saying that it is conducting an ongoing investigation into the case. The CDC says that its the first case of severe illness being transmitted through a backyard flock, but maintains that no case of human-to-human spread of bird flu has been detected, and that the CDC assesses the public health risk from the disease as low.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza has been rampant in poultry farms across the country, with some 123 million birds affected, according to the CDC. Nearly 11,000 wild birds have been detected with the disease, with experts not sure how it's transmitted outside of poultry farms.
"We don't know how the backyard flocks got infected," said Dr. Rebecca Christofferson, an associate professor with the department of pathobiological sciences at Louisiana State University's School of Veterinary Medicine.
More monitoring of the movements of migratory birds is needed in order to understand how the disease is spread to backyard flocks of chickens or other birds, said Christofferson.
Bird flu was first detected in the U.S. in the wild bird population in South Carolina in January 2022, according to the California government, and in the wild bird population in California in July 2022. This past March, an outbreak of bird flu in dairy cows was first reported in Texas and Kansas.
A spokesperson for the CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on details of the Louisiana case, or the symptoms he showed. Typical symptoms shown by those that contract the virus include congestion and conjunctivitis, said Christofferson.
Write to Kirk Maltais at kirk.maltais@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
12-18-24 1740ET