US: Scientists call new measures to control bird flu in cows a drop in the bucket

Too little and too late—that’s how many scientists see a set of measures ordered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to slow the unprecedented outbreak of the H5N1 avian influenza virus in dairy cows. The order, which took effect on 29 April, 1 month after the first reported cases, bans the transport of infected cows from state to state. But with the virus already infecting farms in at least nine states, “It’s a drop in the bucket,” says evolutionary biologist Mike Worobey of the University of Arizona. Scientists are also troubled by the lack of widespread testing for the virus, a strain known as clade 2.3.4.4b that has devastated birds and some wild mammals. “We are still looking under streetlights,” Lauren Sauer, a health emergencies researcher at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told a briefing organized by Brown University on 26 April. “We’re not looking where we don’t already see indicators that the virus is there, and that never gives us enough ...