As bird flu spreads beyond dairy herds within the Central Valley to farms in Southern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Wednesday to strengthen and streamline the state's response to the virus.
“This proclamation is a targeted measure to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak,” Newsom said in a Opinion.
The emergency declaration allows the governor to release state funds and other resources to assist state and native governments hire staff and award contracts to combat the contagion. If vital, it gives the governor broad authority to issue mandates intended to slow the spread of the virus and bypass certain state laws that would slow the response.
It could also help increase testing capability, which officials hope will help find cases that likely have gone undetected. There aren’t any reports of the virus arriving at dairies in rural areas of the Bay Area, although the state just isn’t releasing the names of affected farms.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the present public health risk is low. So far this 12 months, 61 human cases of bird flu have been confirmed within the United States. The virus just isn’t known to spread amongst humans and is never transmitted through contact with infected animals. When infections have occurred in humans, they are frequently mild and manageable.
But on Wednesday, the CDC confirmed the primary known serious avian flu infection in a patient from southwest Louisiana. The hospitalized patient is over 65 years old and has other health complications, in line with the Louisiana Department of Health.
The Louisiana patient's virus is genetically different from the virus spreading amongst dairy cows. The strain that sickened the Louisiana resident is often known as genotype D1.1 and is found amongst wild birds and poultry staff. The strain circulating in dairy cows and infecting California farm staff is often known as the B3.13 genotype.
Recently D1.1 infected a teen in Vancouver, British Columbia, who had a severe case that required intensive care. The sequencing data suggests that the teenager's virus contained two possible mutations that would improve the virus's ability to contaminate human cells and one other mutation that would allow it to copy more easily in human cells only within the cells of its usual avian host. in line with the journal Nature. None of the infected teenager's three dozen close contacts became in poor health.
Bird flu doesn’t spread through food, except raw milk. A current Stanford study found that the virus stays infectious in refrigerated raw milk for as much as five days. It is killed by pasteurization.
After emerging in 2020, the virus caused large outbreaks in birds in Europe, Africa and Asia. It arrived within the U.S. in January 2022 and stormed through the nation's largest clusters of poultry farms within the East and Midwest, driving up egg prices.
Despite a rapid response – biosecurity measures at farm entrances, immediate killing of doubtless infected animals, quarantine of affected farms – the disease has continued to spread and infect dairy cattle.
The continued spread of the virus, now widespread amongst wild birds and affecting nearly half of California's dairy farms, is a worrisome development. The more it spreads, the greater the possibility it has of mutating.
California's local health officials welcomed the statement, saying the state must rebuild core workforce and public health infrastructure capability to quickly detect, reply to and contain public health threats.
“We appreciate Governor Newsom’s actions that provide flexibility and enable California to request more federal funding to support health officials’ ongoing efforts to prevent the spread of H5N1, also known as avian influenza, in livestock and people,” said Elsa Mendoza Jimenez, President Member of the County Health Executives Association of California and Director of Health Services for the County of Monterey Health Department.
In an additional step to escalate the response The US Department of Agriculture announced this on Tuesday that a second round of states has been added to its recent National Milk Testing Strategy, bringing the number to 13. These states represent eight of the 15 largest milk producing states and account for half of the country's total production. Farmers and milk processors in these states could also be required to supply raw milk samples upon government request.
The The USDA confirmed five additional outbreaks in dairy herds on Tuesday4 from California and one from Texas. The outbreak affected 865 dairy herds in 16 states this 12 months. The overwhelming majority of those diagnoses are in California, while Nevada and Texas have each tested positive.
The USDA also reported additional poultry outbreaks in three states. Bird flu has also been confirmed in nearly 124 million poultry in 49 states.
Some counties, like Sonoma, had previously declared a state of emergency to mitigate the impact of the disaster, including providing support to businesses. In November 2023, bird flu raged through Sonoma County's historic poultry region, leading to the slaughter of greater than one million birds and causing heartache and economic disaster to small family farmers within the once famous “Egg Capital of the World.”
“While the risk to the public remains low,” Newsom said, “we will continue to take all necessary steps to prevent the spread of this virus.”
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