Dairy workers, veterinarians and lab techs to be considered for USA / EU / Canada H5N1 vaccination program.
Why?
On May 24th The New England Journal of Medicine published a troubling report: Cow’s Milk Containing Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus — Heat Inactivation and Infectivity in Mice | New England Journal of Medicine (nejm.org)
essentially showing that while pasteurization might reduce the amount of live virus by a magnitude of 4.5, it DOES NOT kill 100% of the live virus.
"HPAI H5–positive milk poses a risk when consumed untreated, but heat inactivation under the laboratory conditions used here reduces HPAI H5 virus titers by more than 4.5 log units. However, bench-top experiments do not recapitulate commercial pasteurization processes."
Governments are starting to react (without a sense of urgency).
From Canada:
“All of our efforts need to be focused on preventing those events from happening,” said Matthew Miller, co-director of the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub at McMaster University. “Once we have widespread infections of humans, we're in big trouble.”
From USA:
"Dr. Richard Webby, a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital virologist who studies flu in animals and birds for the World Health Organization, said the situation in dairy cattle merits vaccine use. "If we look at the exposure levels that some of these farmers are getting, it's high," Webby said."
Government and Pharma:
"The U.S. is in talks with mRNA vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna about potential pandemic vaccines." Meanwhile, seasonal flu vaccine makers, including Sanofi could also be asked to shift to producing pandemic flu vaccines."
Reuters:
Information continues to trickle in that this is a serious risk to agriculture, the greater food supply chain and public health.
Similar article from May 2020.