Federal officers suspect that dwell chicken markets in San Francisco would be the supply of chicken flu virus in space wastewater samples.
Days after well being screens reported the invention of suspected avian flu viral particles in wastewater therapy vegetation, federal officers introduced that they had been taking a look at poultry markets close to the therapy amenities.
Final month, San Francisco Public Well being Division officers reported that state investigators had detected H5N1 — the avian flu subtype making its method by U.S. cattle, home poultry and wild birds — in two chickens at a dwell market in Could. Additionally they famous they’d found the virus in metropolis wastewater samples collected throughout that interval.
Two new “hits” of the virus had been recorded from wastewater samples collected June 18 and June 26 by WastewaterSCAN, an infectious-disease monitoring community run by researchers at Stanford, Emory College and Verily, Alphabet Inc.’s life sciences group.
Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, mentioned that though the supply of the virus in these samples has not been decided, dwell poultry markets had been a possible wrongdoer.
Hits of the virus had been additionally found in wastewater samples from the Bay Space cities of Palo Alto and Richmond. It’s unclear if these cities host dwell chicken markets, shops the place clients can take a dwell chicken residence or have it processed on-site for meals.
Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Meals and Agriculture, mentioned dwell chicken markets bear common testing for avian influenza.
He mentioned that apart from the Could 9 detection in San Francisco, there have been no “different positives in Stay Fowl Markets all through the state throughout this current outbreak of highly-pathogenic avian flu.”
San Francisco’s well being division referred all inquiries to the state.
Even when the state or metropolis had missed a number of contaminated birds, John Korslund, a retired U.S. Division of Agriculture veterinarian epidemiologist, appeared incredulous that a number of birds may trigger a optimistic hit within the metropolis’s wastewater.
“Except you’ve bought large quantities of contaminated birds — wherein case you should have some lifeless birds, too — it’d take lots of chicken poop” to change into detectable in a metropolis’s wastewater system, he mentioned.
“However the query nonetheless stays: Has anybody accomplished sequencing?” he mentioned. “It makes me wish to tear my hair out.”
He mentioned genetic sequencing would assist well being officers decide the origin of viral particles — whether or not they got here from dairy milk, or from wild birds. Some epidemiologists have voiced considerations concerning the unfold of H5N1 amongst dairy cows, as a result of the animals may act as a vessel wherein chicken and human viruses may work together.
Nonetheless, Alexandria Boehm, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford College and principal investigator and program director for WastewaterSCAN, mentioned her group shouldn’t be but “capable of reliably sequence H5 influenza in wastewater. We’re engaged on it, however the strategies aren’t adequate for prime time but.”
A evaluate of companies round San Francisco’s southeast wastewater therapy facility signifies a dairy processing plant in addition to a warehouse retailer for a “member-supported group of folks that feed uncooked or cooked recent meals diets to their pets.”
