MORGANTOWN — Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, more commonly known as H5N1 or bird flu, claimed its first human victim in the United States earlier this month.
In the past year, it’s resulted in the deaths of some 145 million birds – largely commercial poultry, most of which were killed in an effort to stop the spread of the disease.
Anybody looking to test a new quiche recipe has seen the effects of those efforts at the grocery store.
“People are probably hearing about egg prices and chicken prices. They are still having to kill significant flocks of avian farms, because if one chicken gets it, if one duck gets it, then they kill the whole farm,” Monongalia County Health Officer Dr. Brian Huggins said. “They don’t do that for cows, but that is a big reason that the egg prices and things like that are going up is there’s just a lot of birds that are unfortunately being killed to try to stop the spread of this disease.”
On Thursday, the West Virginia Department of Agriculture suspended all poultry exhibitions, shows, swaps, meets and sales at flea markets.
The decision followed recent HPAI confirmations in commercial poultry operations in multiple surrounding states, as well as a confirmed case in a backyard flock in Pocahontas County.
According to the Center for Disease Control, there are a total of 67 confirmed human cases in the U.S. With the exception of the Louisiana man who died Jan. 6, the symptoms have been mild. There’s been no person-to-person transmission.
But the longer it hangs around, the more potentially dangerous it becomes to humans.
According to information published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, CDC scientists studying the disease’s lone human victim found the virus had started to mutate to better replicate in humans.
Huggins said the disease is showing up in both wastewater and routine flu surveillance separate from the targeted testing being done in and around farms.
Further, there have been flocks discovered harboring multiple strains of the virus.
“The risk there is anytime you have multiple strains of highly virulent avian flu; if they mix, it just heightens the alarm that we could be looking at a pandemic,” Huggins said.
Right now, however, the risk remains low.
“So again, just as a reminder, pasteurized milk is safe, raw milk is not,” Huggins said, adding, “There’s a theme, anything that’s raw, involving chickens, you’re at risk of disease. So far, there’s no risk of disease that we’ve seen in eggs.”
The threat extends to raw pet food as household pets, particularly cats, are susceptible to the disease. It’s been detected in more than 50 species of mammals
“It’s in almost all migratory animals, and so it’s harder to test, but that’s how they believe it gets into the farms; bird droppings or whatever,” Huggins said.
Because the virus spreads in droplets, Huggins said anyone power washing bird or animal waste should wear a respirator. Further, anyone washing their shoes after potentially stepping in animal waste – for example, goose and duck droppings on the rail trail – should avoid splashing.
The West Virginia Department of Agriculture asks poultry owners to report unusual death loss, a drop in egg production or any sick domestic birds to WVDA’s Animal Health Division at 304-558-2214.
