Human Bird Flu Cases Tick Up; Second Colorado Poultry Farm Reports Spread, Bureaucrats Slaughter Millions Of Chickens

Human bird flu cases tick up; second Colorado poultry farm reports spread

Beth Mole

A second Colorado poultry farm has reported a case of bird flu in a worker, marking the state's seventh human case this month amid the ongoing outbreak among dairy cows.

Colorado health officials said the seventh case is, for now, a presumptive positive. That means that the person has tested positive at the state level while confirmatory testing is being carried out at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The presumptive positive worker was at a poultry facility in the state's northeastern Weld County. In recent weeks, six workers at another poultry farm in Weld also tested positive for bird flu. In that facility, a commercial egg layer operation with about 1.8 million birds, workers were infected as they culled chickens known to be infected with the highly pathogenic avian influenza. Genetic testing of the virus in the birds and the workers indicated that they were infected with a strain of H5N1 closely related to the virus found spreading in dairy cattle and to dairy farm workers.

The US Department of Agriculture confirmed in late March that the H5N1 bird flu that had been spreading globally among wild birds for years had unexpectedly jumped to dairy cows in the US. To date, at least 168 herds in 13 states have tested positive for the virus. Amid the dairy outbreak, 11 humans have contracted the virus. Four of the cases were among dairy workers: one in Texas, two in Michigan, and one in Colorado, which was reported earlier this month. The remaining seven cases were among poultry workers, all in Colorado. (There was also a human H5N1 case in a Colorado poultry worker in 2022, prior to the virus jumping to cows.)

The recent spate of human infections among Colorado poultry workers is notable, given that H5N1 has been plaguing poultry farms in the US since January 2022. To date, there have been over 1,000 outbreaks across 48 states, affecting over 100 million birds. In most of those cases, it is believed that poultry, which are highly susceptible to avian influenza, became infected directly from wild birds. Yet, cases in poultry workers are quickly ticking up only after the virus moved from wild birds to dairy cows and then to poultry.

It also remains unclear how the virus is spreading from dairy farms to poultry farms in this latest stage of the outbreak. However, it may not be a surprise that Colorado, of all states, is the one seeing a spillover from dairies to poultry farms; the state has reported 46 of the country's 168 infected herds, the most of any of the 13 states affected by the outbreak. Weld County, in particular, has reported more than two dozen infected herds.

 Bureaucrats slaughter millions of chickens amid “bird flu” 

Ethan Huff

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is spreading fear by declaring an "emergency disaster" in response to reports about the alleged spread of highly pathogenic bird flu in northeastern Weld County.

Polis "verbally" declared the disaster after "an avian flu outbreak in a commercial poultry facility in Weld County," reads an official statement from Polis' office on July 8. The statement does not name the facility that was allegedly impacted by H5N1.

The emergency disaster declaration allows Polis and his regime to use emergency powers to "take all necessary and appropriate state actions to assist with response, recovery, and mitigation efforts."

The Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) confirmed that 1.78 million chickens were "impacted" by the bird flu strain, which of course means that the food fowl were slaughtered to keep everyone "safe."

On July 3, CDA announced that a dairy worker in northeastern Colorado supposedly became infected with H5N1 after having "direct exposure" to cattle supposedly sick with the virus. The worker's only symptom was mild conjunctivitis, also known as "pink eye."

"He has recovered," the agency said in a follow-up statement about the worker. "This case is an employee at a dairy farm in northeast Colorado who had direct exposure to dairy cattle infected with avian flu. To protect patient privacy, additional details are not being provided."