United States: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is going to put the data on the influenza A found in the wastewater on a public dashboard perhaps as soon as Friday, which may give new clues about the outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in the cattle herds.
CDC finding the cause of rising influenza A
According to the department’s wastewater team leader, Amy Kirby, the CDC has detected the rise of influenza A, of which H5N1 is a subtype, in some sites. She stated there is no evidence of human infection by H5N1.
She mentioned that the process of checking the waste water of sewers had turned out to be a very effective method for identifying the mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus during the COVID-19 epidemic, Reuters reported.
Kirby mentioned that the CDC has been gathering data about influenza in wastewater in about 600 sites since the fall and has been doing this to track respiratory infections.
That information can now be used to monitor the spreading of H5N1 bird flu, which has infected the dairy herds in nine countries of the United States, including 42 dairy herds and one dairy farm worker.
Scientists are looking at the virus to see what improvements it can make to allow it to spread faster among human beings, Reuters added.
Wastewater doesn’t tell the source of the virus
The wastewater tests are able to identify many kinds of influenza A, such as H5N1, but the results do not reveal the source of the virus or whether it was from a bird, cow, milk or farm runoff or humans.
The dashboard will enable people to find out about the rising cases of influenza A in their area, and also to compare it with the historical data when available. The decrease of seasonal influenza cases has been significant, hence, a spike can mean an alert about the abnormal flu activity.
The testing done so far has identified a rise in flu in samples that are “very localized in only a handful of sites,” as Kirby mentioned.
More about the sample study
Dr. Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri who developed a wastewater monitoring system for COVID, along with other scientists, developed tests to identify H5N1 in wastewater samples. However, as per him, the CDC is discouraging the usage of such tests.
Kirby added, “It really doesn’t get us any further to knowing what the source of this is. Is it dairy? Or is it human? Or is it wild birds? Or is it poultry? All of those things are still on the table,” and “It doesn’t get us any farther down the road.”
Additionally, Johnson said, “I’m not worried about the cows. I’m not worried about the milk. But I’m worried that there are lots of other animals that it can jump to, and eventually, it’s going to find a combination that can make it into humans if we’re not careful,” as Reuters reported.
According to Dr. Marlene Wolfe, from Emory University in Atlanta and program director of WastewaterSCAN, a wastewater detection program supported by Verily, “That represents a really significant lead time that we can have if we’re implementing this work as widely and as readily as we should be as a country.”