On the avian flu front, it is both the worst-case scenario that is coming to fruition, and some reassuring news: in the United States, the virus is found to be more often present among agricultural workers than expected. had measured. On the other hand, several of these people did not have symptoms, which suggests that the virus is less virulent than feared.
Remember that H5N1 avian flu, after having been detected since the end of 2021 in at least 50 species of mammals – which means that it has acquired one or more mutations allowing it to cross the barrier of these species – is detected in the States -United since last March in cows. However, as many humans on farms are in daily contact with cows, this raises fears that a mutation would be enough for this virus to become transmissible between humans.
Since last March, American farmers have often been hostile to the idea of letting veterinarians carry out systematic screening of their animals or their employees, which gave only a partial idea of the dispersion of the virus: officially, H5N1 has was identified in 446 cows in 15 states and in 44 farm workers.
However, according to a collection of blood samples carried out from 115 agricultural workers in Michigan and Colorado by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), and only on farms where at least one cow had tested positive for the virus, 7 % of these workers (or 8 of them) had antibodies to the virus—meaning they had been carrying the virus at some point. It’s not much, but it’s a proportion far higher than the official figures, in addition to the fact that it only concerns two states, and only farms where the virus had already been detected.
Less serious symptoms?
The only reassuring aspect of this news is that four of the eight people did not remember having any flu symptoms. Which would mean that the effects of the virus are generally less serious than in the worst-case scenarios mentioned in recent months. On the other hand, this also supposes that many cases already escape the radar screens.
At the same time, the CDC also looked at how the virus is now transmitted between ferrets: in research published October 28 in the journal Naturethey note that in certain circumstances, the virus can be transmitted easily from one animal to another. However, the ferret, like us, expels the virus through its spittle, and its lung cells have receptors similar to ours, through which the virus can enter a cell.
As far as we can judge from these partial data, the humans infected on the farms would have all been infected through direct contact with cows or poultry: in other words, the virus, although it is capable of transmitted from a cow to a human, would not yet have acquired the capacity to transmit from one human to another. But if it ever happens, the number of cases without symptoms raises fears that unknowingly infected workers could transmit the virus to their loved ones.
Subscribe to our sprawling newsletter
Encourage us for the price of a coffee
Related News :