San Mateo County officers announced on Thursday that they had discovered a pet cat in Half Moon Bay, which was infected with H5N1 bird flu. This is only two days after they reported that the virus was found in a poultry herd in the back yard in Redwood City.
The reports were about to control and prevent diseases and prevention of a table shortly before the current centers, which shows that a young person may have been infected by a PET cat with the virus. According to the New York Times, the information that has come into the office in the first morbidity and dying weekly report by the agency since President Trump and which largely focused on Californian forest fires – “briefly” before they disappeared.
The CDC did not answer questions about the data.
Seema Lakdawala, a microbiologist at Emory University in Atlanta, said that it was “premature to interpret the data in the table without reading the full report” – a feeling that from several other scientists that from Los Angeles Times repeated, repeated to check the table.
According to the screenshots of a data table made available by the Washington Post, two households seem to be affected by the virus, although there were no details to determine where these infections occurred.
In household 1 there was initially a cat that got sick. This cat died four days later and was tested positively for H5N1. On the same day, another cat got sick in the house. Two days later – on the sixth day of the infection in the household – a youth to live in the house began symptoms. This child tested negatively for the illness, as did a symptomless adult and a symptomless youth in the house.
In household 2, which seems to be connected to household 1, although the special features are vague, an adult milk producer showed signs of illnesses one week after the first cat in household and showed symptoms. This person was not tested for the virus and was “lost to follow-up” according to the CDC graphic. Two days later, a cat who lived in household 2 showed symptoms. The next day the cat died and tested positively on H5N1. A second cat in household 2 tested negatively for the disease.
The CDC table contains – since it is scrubbed by the website – no information about how the initial cat was infected in household 1.
Lakdawala found that although none of the people and some of the cats did not test positively for the virus, “the influenza noses are sometimes negative, but it can replicate anywhere else.” In fact, researchers have found positive.
Asked whether the case has taken place in California, where 36 of the 40 H5N1 cases associated with the dairy products, a spokeswoman for the state Ministry of Health in the state, said the bird flu is up to date. She said that the department officials are “no confirmed cases of Bird flu in California in connection with exposure to domestic cats consciously “.
Regardless of this, the report by San Mateo is worrying – in the growing record of the household cats infected with H5N1.
H5N1 was demonstrated in more than a dozen California cats, including in Contra Costa, Fresno, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Bernadino, San Mateo Counties and Tulars as well as scores in at least 17 other states, including Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana , Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
According to an explanation of the health officers of the district of San Mateo, the cat was a stray that had been recorded by a family in Half Moon Bay. A press release from the district says that the family members, when the cat started showing symptoms, made it to a veterinarian for examining and examining. The laboratory results confirmed the bird flu and the cat was “put to sleep because of its condition”.
The district’s health officers stated that they did not know how the cat was infected and did not describe the symptoms of the cat. There is currently no confirmation of when the family took the cat and in what conditions it was at the time of adoption.
Typically, the symptoms of bird flu in cats include an appetite loss, lethargy and fever as well as neurological signs such as repeated movement in circles or “circles”, tremors, seizures or blindness. Other symptoms are severe depression; From eyes or nose outflow; Fast, flat breathing, breathing difficulties; And sneeze or cough. Some cats will die.
In the explanation of the district of San Mateo, readers were also pointed out to a CDC website that says: “Although it is unlikely that you will get sick with bird flu through direct contact with your infected pet.”
The report of the infected cat in San Mateo came two days after the county had reported a small outbreak in a poultry herd in the city in Redwood – although this event was not associated with any human cases.
In the declaration, the district advised residents to keep the herds of poultry to observe signs of bird flu and take appropriate measures – such as washing hands before and after dealing with birds and disinfection of shoes to reduce the risk of spreading bird flu .
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.