Bird flu virus found in milk, is of “great concern” to WHO

Health

By Amy Eisinger

A recent statement from the World Health Organization is sure to ruffle a few feathers.

The international health group expressed “great concern” over the rising number of bird flu cases in humans. The organization also announced Friday that the virus has been found in raw milk. 

Dr. Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the WHO, noted that the avian flu, also called H5N1, had an “extremely high” mortality rate among those who had been infected around the world. 

The illness remains extremely rare in the US, with just two known cases, one that occurred earlier this month and one that occurred in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In both of those cases, the infected individuals worked in close proximity to livestock. 

No human-to-human transmissions of the disease have occurred. 

“The great concern, of course, is that … [the] virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans. And then critically, the ability to go from human-to-human transmission,” Farrar warned.

On Friday, the WHO further warned that the virus has been found in raw milk. Officials said that drinking pasteurized milk — which is the kind sold throughout the US in grocery stores — is still safe. Dairy farmers in the US are also required to destroy milk from infected cows, so it should not make its way into the food supply chain in the first place.

Dr. Wenqing Zhang, who leads the WHO’s global flu program, said that the virus had been identified in a “very high virus concentration in raw milk” from infected cows, according to the Daily Mail. Researchers are still trying to determine how long the virus might be able to survive in milk.

In general, drinking raw milk is always a bad idea, as raw milk can carry other contaminants, like salmonella, listeria, and E. coli — all of which can make you sick.

Zhang also reiterated the cases that have been identified in the US and in Europe have been relatively mild.

There are two types of avian flu tracked by the CDC — low pathogenic and highly pathogenic. The latter, as you can probably guess, is more serious because it has a higher mortality rate in poultry, 90% – 100% and often within 48 hours. The person in Texas who contracted the illness earlier this month has the highly pathogenic form of the virus.

Since January 2022, the CDC notes that over 90 million birds have been infected in 48 states. But the current outbreak isn’t just affecting birds, it’s affecting cattle as well. Currently, eight states have avian flu cattle outbreaks.

The WHO urged US officials to monitor the situation closely because the virus could “evolve into transmitting in different ways.”

“Do the milking structures of cows create aerosols? Is it the environment which they’re living in? Is it the transport system that is spreading this around the country?” Farrar questioned. “This is a huge concern and I think we have to … make sure that if H5N1 did come across to humans with human-to-human transmission, that we were in a position to immediately respond with access equitably to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.”

This is hardly the first warning of a potential bird flu pandemic. 

Earlier this month, scientists sounded the alarm that such a pandemic could be “100 times worse than COVID.”

“This virus [has been] on the top of the pandemic list for many, many years and probably decades,” said Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, a bird flu researcher from Pittsburgh, according to the Daily Mail.

The only hope, officials went on, is that the virus would be less deadly in humans than it is in birds.

“Once it’s mutated to infect humans, we can only hope that the [fatality rate] drops,” said John Fulton, a pharmaceutical industry consultant for vaccines, according to the Mail.

Between 2003 and 2019, 861 cases of the avian flu were identified globally and 455 people have died, meaning that the fatality rate is nearly 53%, according to the CDC.

If a pandemic were to occur, the Food and Drug Administration has a few vaccines for humans on hand, Forbes reported. Currently, there’s not enough to protect all Americans, and the CDC has previously stated that it would “take months” and be a multi-step process to create enough in the event of a pandemic.