United States: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is starting a 5 million dollars program to offer seasonal flu shots this fall to about 200,000 livestock workers in states most affected by the bird flu outbreak.
Reducing the Risk of Virus Reassortment
As here the workers in the poultry, dairy and the pig farms are at the greatest risk of being simultaneously exposed to the seasonal flu and the H5N1 and the bird flu that has been infected at least 172 dairy herds in the 13 states according to the Department of Agriculture.
Here are such exposures raise the rare risk of the two viruses exchanging the genetic material, a process known as reassortment, to create a new influenza virus that “could pose a significant public health concern by becoming more and more efficient at the spread and potentially very serious, Nirav Shah, CDC’s principal deputy director said at the news briefing on Tuesday.
Outreach and Education Efforts
Also here the Widespread seasonal flu vaccination would surely reduce that risk he said and there are thirteen farmworkers have been infected in the particular outbreak, and all had the mild symptoms and recovered.
Vaccine Availability and Public Health Strategy
Even though the federal government has 4.8 million doses of H5N1 bird flu vaccine officials are not recommending the new vaccine because those infected have experienced the mild symptoms and the virus is not being transmitted between the people and the virus is not being spread asymptomatically.
Also there are some public health experts have argued for the vaccinating the U.S. Farmworkers against the bird flu among some of the workers with the exposure to the animals.
Analysis
As mentioned by HealthDay, the CDC is providing $5 million to community organizations, including the National Center for Farmworker Health, for outreach and education on flu vaccinations.
The CDC ‘s efforts definitely shows that they will going to purchase seasonal flu shots, which states can order and administer through state health departments and community organizations at farms, churches, community centers, and other gathering places.
According to the CDC, there will be enough shots to vaccinate every livestock worker in the country if they want one, though typically, less than half of the U.S. population gets a flu shot each year.
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