It’s been five years now since COVID-19 hit the world, killing over a million people in the U.S. and more than 12,000 in Nevada.
Now we’re starting to hear about avian influenza — also known as H5N1. It’s been found around the country, and in early December, in a herd of dairy cows in Nye County, Nevada.
“[The dairy] noticed that these cows didn't seem quite right, and then that milk production dropped,” said Dr. J.J. Goicoechea, a veterinarian and the director of the Nevada Department of Agriculture. After testing, a laboratory confirmed the presence of bird flu, and the dairy is now being quarantined until every cow tests negative.
Since then, Goicoechea said that Nevada has also become the first state in the U.S. to begin testing dairy silos, where milk is stored after it’s collected from cattle.
“We only had one plant that had virus in it,” Goicoechea said. “That is not surprising, because that is the plant that receives milk from the one infected dairy that we have now. Nowhere else in the state did we detect H5N1. So, we're fairly confident that we're keeping this virus contained in Nye County.”
Those containment efforts are augmented by an effort to cull the starling population, which the Department of Agriculture notes is invasive and prone to spreading bird flu to farm animals.
To date, experts like Dr. Brian Labus, an epidemiologist at UNLV's School of Public Health, said the virus hasn't mutated to the point of being spread human-to-human. Case in point: During the 2024 outbreak, 66 human cases have been confirmed in the United States. None of those cases have been in Nevada, and one of those patients have died. And when it does occasionally spread to humans, usually from working with infected animals, it typically presents as a mild illness.
“We've seen a lot of people infected with no symptoms or very mild symptoms,” Labus said. “The first cases we had reported in the U.S. had some conjunctivitis [pink eye], so their eyes turned a little red, and that was it. They didn't even have respiratory symptoms. So, the disease that we're seeing is a big deal for animals, but not for humans.”
That has skewed the widely circulated human fatality rates, as well, which reports from previous H5N1 outbreaks have placed around 50%. But, Labus said, that number doesn’t take into account the cases that likely resolved at home without treatment.
“[It doesn’t] take into account the fact that only a tiny percent of people are hospitalized, and most had very mild illness,” he said. “Same thing was true in China in the early days of COVID, we saw really high mortality rates because we were testing the people who were the sickest and about to die. So, it basically is the result of us testing the sickest people and not getting an accurate picture of how the disease affects the entire population.”
For concerned consumers, public health officials reassure that you can't catch it from properly treated dairy, eggs, and meat, though the virus has been found in raw milk — which is illegal in Nevada.
Here's the current status of the virus, according to the CDC:
- Dairy cattle: Ongoing multi-state outbreak
- Wild birds: Widespread
- Poultry flocks: Sporadic outbreaks
- Mammals: Sporadic infections
- Person-to-person spread: None
- Current public health risk: Low
Guests: Brian Labus, epidemiologist and assistant professor, UNLV School of Public Health; Dr. J.J. Goicoechea, director, Nevada Department of Agriculture
