United States: A third farm worker in Michigan was infected with bird flu and was associated with sick dairy cows, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Thursday.
As per the reports, none of the cases were linked with one another.
More about the news
This is the second farmworker in Michigan in seven days to receive a diagnosis of the disease. A dairy worker in Texas has also been infected, and the date was found in March. In a peculiar finding, the previous cases only recorded one common symptom, which is pinkeye eye or conjunctivitis.
However, the last case is different in that the patient had other symptoms related to the upper respiratory system, such as a sore throat, cough, and congestion.
What have the officials stated?
In a media briefing on Thursday, a CDC official, Dr. Nirav Shah, who is the principal deputy director, mentioned that it was yet inconclusive that the virus in question; an H5N1 A strain of influenza was spreading from one person to another. Although the risk was observed among people with respiratory infection.
He added, “Simply put, someone who’s coughing may be more likely to transmit the virus than someone who has an eye infection like conjunctivitis,” as NBC News reported.
Tests are being conducted by CDC
The CDC is conducting sequencing on samples of the virus sampled from the patient to see if these changes would lead to transmissibility in a way which the virus wasn’t previously capable of in this case mutating. That kind of information could be produced within days.
The last patient also had eye issues such as eye itching and tearing, but their condition is not known if they have contracted pinkeye. As in the previous scenario, the patient was prescribed Tamiflu and claimed to be improving.
Both of the sickened Michigan employees weren’t fully protected according to the protocols of personal protective equipment or PPE, according to the head of the health department in Michigan Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian.
According to the chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, the infected Michigan workers were not in possession of protective wearables, or PPE, during the time they got infected.
Moreover, Bagdasarian announced in a press release that “With the first case in Michigan, eye symptoms occurred after a direct splash of infected milk to the eye. With this case, respiratory symptoms occurred after direct exposure to an infected cow,” NBC News reported.