It was confirmed on January 21st that there is a new variant of H5N1, or avian flu, circulating in dairy cows in Churchill County.
Before this, B313 was the strain circulating throughout the nation's cattle since last March.
There is one herd in southern Nevada that was quarantined with the B313 strain back in early December, but now the latest herds have been diagnosed with a new variant, D1.1.
“This strain is another spill over event from wild waterfowl, and it has never been documented in cows before,” said JJ Goicoechea, a Doctor in Veterinary Medicine and Director of the Nevada Department of Agriculture.
From the virus H5N1 there have been two variants, those being B313 and D1.1.
A good example of why this happens is comparing it to the flu in humans. The flu we experienced last year is not the same as the flu we are experiencing this year. Viruses are always evolving to adapt to their environment.
Goicoechea says this virus is the first time we're seeing it transfer from wildlife to domestic cows.
In Nevada we're not seeing severe infections in humans, although they've had a few reported cases of conjunctivitis.
“Almost all cases have been conjunctivitis. Very mild signs. Now there was one that did have a variant, and that individual did succumb to that, but they also had underlying medical conditions and that was in Louisiana.”
He adds that there should not be a widespread panic on this issue.
As for monitoring, they don't track the individual cows when they find bird flu in the dairy, instead they quarantine the entire dairy.
“Right now, we have a total of seven, the one in southern Nevada which was the first variant and now six in Churchill county which is the new variant, so we have a total of seven herds in Nevada quarantined with H5N1.”
That is around 50,000 total cows quarantined.
As for immunity against other variants and future variants, it may be too early to tell.
“We are literally six days into this response effort. For confirmation, we have a long way to go and a lot to learn, and then how is it being spread? We are working with the USDA and wildlife services to try and do more sampling of all species around these dairies to figure out where else it might be and how it might be moving between dairies,” he said.
They made the initial detection during a part of their national milk testing strategy.
Nevada is one of the first states to initiate silo testing, which are big tanks that are the fluid milk plants, and there are four of those in the state.
They elected to start testing them in the end of December and beginning of January, at which point they made a detection of Bird Flu in two plants in Northern Nevada.
“So from there we know exactly who’s milk is in those silos, and we went back to those individual farms and we tested their individual bulk tanks and that is how we come to this conclusion," he said. "Now, going forward, what we’re doing is testing all remaining farms that are still in the valley that are not quarantined yet that are not proven to be infected.”
They're going through this process on a weekly basis to monitor the spread of this disease and see if they do have more premises that do become infected.
The risk to people is still very low for H5N1, the signs tend to be conjunctivitis or respiratory irritation. Those symptoms typically occur in people who are in close proximity to cattle themselves.
They say it's the people who are working closely with the milk parlor that they're mostly concerned about, those people are asked to use personal protective equipment (PPE).
The State of Nevada is working with the Central Nevada Health District to get more PPE over to their workers, so they have proper eyewear and gloves.
Goicoechea mentions eyewear is very important because over the last year that's where they're seeing most of these infections presented.
As for the general public, there is very little risk in contracting the disease.
But Goicoechea wants to remind everyone “If we do have birds that are deceased on your property, please handle them carefully with gloves, preferably put them in a bag, that type of thing. Don’t be bringing them into the house because this is still a circulating virus in the wild birds as well.”
Goicoechea says they have no reason to know if this virus is going to infect people and be transmitted from person to person. He says it's very early to speculate, and as of now they are not changing their response at all from what they have been doing over the past year even though it's a new strain of the H5N1 virus and they have no evidence of person-to-person transmission.
“The general public really has nothing to worry about as far as the affected dairy herds that we have in the state of Nevada," he said. "Pasteurization is effective in killing this virus is it proven to be and Nevada is a state that does not allow the sale of raw milk. The sale of raw milk is illegal here so all the products you can buy retail are pasteurized products.”
He adds “Your ice cream is safe, your milk is safe, and our beef supply is safe.”
They're working closely with their dairy operators and asking them to step up their biosecurity because they don't want anyone coming on and off that dairy that is not essential.
The NDA is also trying to limit the amount of wildlife that comes on and off the dairy as well.
They're also trying to reduce the population of Starlings that carry diseases because they don't want to further infect the cows with other diseases while their immune systems are down.
And the NDA is trying to figure out if the Starlings are moving the virus from farm to farm.
But Goicoechea reminds us again “The general public, you just don’t want raw milk. The general public is not going to be exposed to that kind of thing. Don’t handle birds your find dead, that you find in your yard of any kind. If you’re worried about it, you can contact the Nevada Department of Wildlife. You can contact Wildlife Services and the Nevada Department of Agriculture.”
He also says they're seeing very mild signs in the cows. They're monitoring the cows' health and trying to get in front of this issue and help make these cows healthy again.
