Seventy Americans in one state are being monitored for bird flu due to possible exposure – after the FDA said H5N1 could cause a pandemic

About 70 Americans in Colorado are being monitored for bird flu due to possible exposure.

Dairy farm workers will be tested for the virus if they show symptoms, although this has not been the case so far, local health officials said.

Details of their age, gender and circumstances have not been released, but they all worked on a farm in the northeastern part of the state.

Only one person so far — a farmer in Texas — has tested positive for the H5N1 virus in this outbreak, but the CDC fears many more could be infected and not come forward.

It comes as the FDA’s top official revealed the agency is preparing for a bird flu pandemic in humans, which could kill one in four of those who become infected.

The map above shows the states that have reported bird flu infections in dairy herds

Dr. Robert Califf, chief commissioner of the FDA, told a Senate committee that officials were drawing up plans to roll out tests, antiviral drugs and vaccines in case the virus jumped to humans and caused a large-scale outbreak.

But he stressed that the risk of the disease spreading among people is still low.

“This virus mutates, like all viruses,” he told policymakers. “We have to continue to prepare for the possibility of it jumping to humans.”

“(The) real concern is that it will jump to the human lungs, where, when that has happened in other parts of the world… the mortality rate has been 25 percent.”

Officials in Colorado said it was still not clear exactly how and when the workers might have been exposed, but bird flu was discovered in the cow herd in late April.

“We’re still putting the pieces together,” Colorado’s state veterinarian Maggie Baldwin said May 8 in a public town hall on Zoom.

Texas has tested about 20 dairy workers with flu symptoms, with one test positive, while Idaho tested one person and New Mexico said it tested three people.

But the CDC says there is reluctance among states and farms to cooperate with the agency because farmers worry about financial losses if their livestock is found to be infected.

After causing a record outbreak in birds in recent years, H5N1 appears to be spreading among cattle for the first time.

A total of 36 farms in nine states have so far detected the virus among their dairy herds. Only one of the 36 dairy herds is in Colorado.

As the virus spreads, especially between two different species, it acquires more mutations that make it easier to infect people.

Fragments of the virus have already been found in products including one in five supermarket milk, as well as cottage cheese and sour cream.

But officials say these are still safe to consume because the virus in them is inactivated during the pasteurization process.

The graph above shows the dairy herds that have tested positive for bird flu over time. Officials fear this brings the virus one step closer to infecting people

A check mark indicates foods that tested positive for avian flu, while a cross indicates which foods tested for avian flu but were not found to contain the virus

Dairy farmers work closely with raw milk, which contains high levels of bird flu when produced by infected cattle.

Only two people in the US have ever tested positive for bird flu, and both have been in close contact with animals infected with the virus.

In both cases, there have been no signs of the individuals spreading the disease to others.

Some scientists suspect that bird flu may spread when cows are milked because equipment can become infected or the virus can become airborne during cleaning.

People who have close and prolonged contact with infected animals can become infected when the virus enters through their eyes or mouth, or when droplets are inhaled through the nose.

It comes after CDC officials reiterated their warning in a new report that bird flu had “pandemic potential.”

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, they warned in a section about vaccine rollout if the virus passes to humans.

Also last week, a separate study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture published genetic data showing that the H5N1 strain ripping through dairy farms had acquired dozens of new mutations.

These changes could make the strain more likely to spread from cows to other animals, including humans, and make the virus resistant to antiviral drugs.