‘We’re basically flying blind’: An epidemiologist’s take on the US response to bird flu

A bird flu outbreak in U.S. dairy cows is raising alarm bells for public health officials, who have recently called on the government to ramp up efforts to prevent the virus from spreading to humans and potentially causing another COVID-like pandemic.  

Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, a popular science blogger and one of Time 100’s most influential people in health, recently spoke with Agriculture Dive about the rapid, novel development of avian influenza in livestock and how farmers and stakeholders should think about the outbreak in order to be safe.

While the viral emergence has echoes of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, Jetelina, a scientific advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and author of the newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist, said there are several key differences between the two in terms of timeline, transmission and effects on animals and humans. 

Here’s what she had to say about the virus’ risk to farmers, the government’s response so far, and whether it’s time to start thinking about vaccinating livestock.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

AGRICULTURE DIVE: In terms of bird flu transmission, what are the biggest unknowns right now? 

KATELYN JETELINA: One big question is how big is the true outbreak? We truly don’t know. We’re basically flying blind. The second big question is how, where and when is H5N1 mutating? 

USDA recently shared a few viral sequences from animal infections. However, data was incomplete. We need to do a whole lot more testing to understand how this virus has changed over time, and therefore predict where it might end up. 

Another big unanswered question is wastewater surveillance. We created this wastewater surveillance during the pandemic which was a huge tool in understanding what areas need action. And we are starting to see H5N1 spike in wastewater, but there’s a lot we don’t know: Is this due to animals (we think so), versus humans? Is this from milk dumping? Is it from animal sewage? We certainly need more data and more visibility into that.

Is this outbreak more widespread than what’s been reported?

Oh, yeah, definitely. It’s definitely more widespread. And for two reasons. One is that it was found in the milk supply, right? And this was surprising because milk from known infected cows was not going into the market. So this confirms that the cow outbreak is much bigger than previously known. 

Second is genomic surveillance. We had a few scientists, citizen scientists walk through what they found analyzing the raw USDA data and what they found was there’s an estimated spillover to dairy cows starting in December. So we think it’s been spreading under our noses for a while and is bigger than what we’re currently reporting right now.

Experts have made it clear that the virus is a low public risk, but what about farmers who interact with poultry and dairy cows every day? How should they be thinking about the virus and what precautions should they take?

So the risk to the average Joe on your corner in the city is very low. But I am more concerned about farmers, workers, emergency responders, really on the front line who are working with livestock every single day that are in direct and close contact. 

They should really be protecting themselves right now, especially since we don’t know how big this outbreak is. We don’t know how effective it’s spreading to humans. Well, yes, we have one confirmed case, but we haven’t been doing more systematic or asymptomatic testing. 

And so there are a number of precautions that they can take. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are going to roll their eyes, but one of them is wearing an N95 mask, wearing gloves and really taking those precautions seriously.”

As an epidemiologist who followed COVID-19 closely, how is this outbreak similar or different in terms of government response?

There’s a lot of similarities, but there’s really important differences too. I mean, some of the similarities that are kind of haunting us, and I think I think that’s why a lot of us are so frustrated, is the lack of transparency, data collection and communication, right off the bat. 

This is slowly changing with H5N1, but we need to be better at that from day one. And there’s a lot of differences too. One example you brought up is vaccines and treatments, right? We’re not starting from zero. We have a stockpile of vaccines. We know Tamiflu works. We have some of these tools ready to engage. That was very different from COVID-19.

Source: fooddive.com

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