(Reuters) – The outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus has spread to dairy cows for the first time in the United States, raising concerns about its spread to people through the country’s milk supply.
As of 2022, bird flu in the United States has infected more than 90 million chickens, more than 9,000 wild birds, 34 dairy herds, one person in Texas who came into close contact with infected livestock and another after exposure to poultry.
The following is a timeline of the current outbreak in the country:
26 April
Colorado became the ninth U.S. state to report an infected dairy herd.
April 25
Colombia became the first country to restrict imports of beef and beef products from US states due to avian flu in dairy cows.
April 24
The US government said it will require dairy cattle moving between states to be tested for bird flu.
April 23
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it had found bird flu virus particles in some samples of pasteurized milk, but said the commercial milk supply remains safe thanks to pasteurization.
11 April
South Dakota became the eighth U.S. state to find bird flu in a dairy herd, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported infections in North Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Michigan, Idaho and New Mexico.
April 4
The bird flu outbreak in dairy cows spread to a dairy herd in Ohio.
April 2
Mexico’s Agriculture Ministry said it is taking preventative measures to increase surveillance and inspections of U.S. livestock imports after bird flu was found in dairy cattle there.
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April 1st
The second known case of bird flu in humans in the United States is reported in a person from Texas who had contact with dairy cows believed to be infected with the virus.
The virus was found in dairy cattle in New Mexico, Michigan and Idaho, along with Texas and Kansas.
March 25
The USDA said samples of milk collected from sick cattle in Kansas and Texas tested positive for bird flu, but the nation’s milk supply was safe.
December 12, 2023
Egg producer Cal-Maine Food (NASDAQ:) said it had temporarily halted production at a plant in Kansas after some of its flock tested positive for bird flu.
November 3, 2023
Arkansas, a major U.S. chicken producer, reported the first outbreak of deadly bird flu in a commercial poultry flock in a year.
October 6, 2023
The United States detected its first case of bird flu on a commercial poultry farm since April, in a flock of 47,300 turkeys in Jerauld County, South Dakota.
April 14, 2023
The US government said it was testing four potential bird flu vaccines for poultry after more than 58 million chickens, turkeys and other birds died in the country’s worst-ever outbreak.
March 20, 2023
Some of the world’s leading flu vaccine makers say they could make hundreds of millions of bird flu vaccines for humans within months if a new bird flu strain ever jumps the species barrier.
October 7, 2022
Bird flu infected a commercial flock of breeding chickens in Arkansas, exacerbating the disease’s outbreak in the southern region.
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Nationally, more than 47 million birds have been killed by bird flu this year or culled to control its spread. This is the country’s worst outbreak since a record 50 million birds were wiped out in 2015.
April 29, 2022
The first known human case of H5N1 bird flu in the United States occurred in an individual in Colorado who was involved in the culling of birds at a commercial poultry farm.
March 7, 2022
Since February 2022, more than 22 million commercially raised American chickens and turkeys have been killed due to outbreaks of a highly deadly form of bird flu.
March 4, 2022
An outbreak of bird flu is reported in a commercial flock of chickens raised for meat in Stoddard County, Missouri, spreading the virus to ten commercial chicken and turkey farms in four states.
February 9, 2022
The USDA reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic bird flu in a turkey flock in Indiana, the nation’s first case at a commercial poultry farm since 2020.
