United States: In the latest such case, six farm workers have reportedly been infected with bird flu in Colorado this month, the highest instance in any state.
Health officials have urged people to be prepared to prevent the H5N1 virus, which has emerged in dairy herds and poultry flocks nationwide.
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Five of the workers were performing the task of culling chickens at the same large industrial barn with the outbreak that affected nearly 2 million hens, authorities in Colorado said.
Federal officials said during the news briefing on Tuesday that as temperatures rise above 104 degrees, it is difficult for the workers to wear full-body suits, goggles, and N95 masks to shield them from contracting the virus.
According to Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “The barns in which the culling operations occur were no doubt even hotter,” as the Washington Post reported.
He added that the industrial fans built on a large scale help to cool down the barns, yet the hens spread feathers around, and carry on with spreading the virus.
Moreover, the culling method itself involves extensive interaction with infected birds, requiring the workers to put chickens in carts that kill them with carbon dioxide gas.
Shah added, “The workers were finding it hard to maintain a good seal or a good fit, either between the mask or with eye protection,” and, “This confluence of factors may play a role in explaining why this outbreak occurred, where it did, and when it did.”
More about the current infection spread
Culling at the affected poultry farm was done involving 160 workers and will still exercise it for the next 10 to 14 days in an effort to also reduce the spread of the virus amongst the birds, said Eric Deeble, senior officer of Livestock & Seed Division at the U. S agriculture department responding to bird flu incident, as the Washington Post reported.
Shah said that, on average, the organization had conducted tests on 55 poultry workers with symptoms, he said. All the samples came out negative for bird flu except for the five workers.
Four have been screened positive, as reported by the CDC, along with one case that is believed to be positive and is awaiting confirmation.
Another 16 tested Monday were symptomatic poultry workers, and their results are still pending, said Colorado officials.
Officials argued that although more cases may be diagnosed, the threat to the wider population is still minimal.
Officials have said that although human infection is rare, all human cases have been reported to have had contact with the infected cows or poultry and not from human-to-human transmission.
H5N1 bird flu is present in wild birds all over the world and hit dairy cows in the US for the first time this spring.
According to the US Agriculture Department, 13 states in the US have been affected by the disease, and at least 160 dairy herds have been affected by it.