Rassegna Stampa

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended this week that dairy and poultry farms with infected animals supply protective gear to workers in a bid to stave off human transmission of the H5N1 virus. The challenge now is making it happen.

The CDC has no legal authority to order those protective measures, and health officials in some of the nine states with reported outbreaks in cattle have had little luck getting farmers to take them up on offers of free personal protective equipment for their workers, even as the virus continues to spread. Six additional infected herds were reported yesterday — in Michigan, Idaho, and Colorado — bringing the total to 42.

Texas, the one state with a confirmed human case, in a worker exposed to infected cows, has sent protective gear to some farms — four, to be exact. The state’s health department began offering gloves, masks, goggles, and gowns to dairy farms at the beginning of April, shortly after the state’s first cases were identified. A handful of sites in the Texas panhandle — each with sick cows — accepted them. The state has reported 12 infected herds so far.

“We offered PPE to any interested dairy and only four took us up on the offer. The offer still stands,” Texas Department of State Health Services press officer Lara Anton told STAT in an email.