As Avian Flu continues to spread in mammals and an increasing number of people, scientists warn that measures currently being used to control the virus are not working, according to an analysis published in Nature. The virus is continues to show a remarkable ability to evolve in recent years, allowing it infect a wide variety of mammal species, including sea lions, seals and cattle. In the past two years, dairy workers have become infected with the virus, which has caused mild symptoms in most cases. The Missouri health department are working to determine source of a person hospitalized with the virus who had no known exposure to animals or raw milk. If this patient was infected by another human, this would be a warning sign that that virus has developed a greater ability to jump from person to person.
However, scientists emphasize that the US, and other countries, lack the tools necessary to montitor, analyze and control the virus. The gaps identified include:
- reluctance to use modern vaccine and monitoring technologies
- insufficient data on the spread of Avian Flu of between cows and humans on dairy farms in throughout the US.
Scientists not that is possible with a combination of political will and collective action by the dairy industry. US cattle producers previously wiped out foot-and-mouth disease by swiftly sharing data. In the ongoing Avian Flu outbreaks, however, months of missing data on the transmission of the virus on US dairy farms has left a major data gap. As a result researchers, policymakers and health professionals do not have the information they need to mitigate the spread of the virus.
“What keeps scientists up at night is the possibility of unseen chains of transmission silently spreading through farm worker barracks, swine barns, or developing countries, evolving under the radar because testing criteria are narrow, government authorities are feared, or resources are thin”, the authors of the study wrote.
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