Avian Influenza in U.S. dairy cows seems to have spread during the milking process

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Ju-young = A study has found that the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b) that has been prevalent in cattle in the United States since this spring is more likely to have spread through milk or the milking process than through the respiratory tract. Professor Jurgen Richt of Kansas State University and Dr. Martin Beer of the Friedrich-Loeffler Institute in Germany announced on the 26th in the scientific journal Nature that they obtained these results in an experiment in which calves and dairy cows were infected with the avian influenza virus prevalent in cattle in the United States and then examined the infectivity. In March, a dairy cow infected with the H5N1 virus was found in Texas, USA, and cases of people who came into contact with the dairy cows being infected with the H5N1 virus were reported, putting health authorities on edge. Since then, the H5N1 virus has been found to have affected more than 190 dairy farms ...