But the reported outbreaks are likely to be a major underestimation of the true spread of the virus, says James Wood, head of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge. 'It's likely there is going to be a fair amount of underreporting and underdiagnosis,' he says.
Tests by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of retail milk samples might give some indication of how widespread the virus is. The agency found viral fragments in one in five samples of commercial milk, although this virus had been deactivated by pasteurization so was not infectious.
Although human infections have tended to be rare, the virus is dangerous-just over half of the human cases recorded by the World Health Organization over the past two decades have been fatal.
Dairy workers are most at risk of possible infection in the current outbreak, but understanding the extent of any infections is extremely tricky, says James Lawler, professor of infectious diseases at University of Nebraska Medical Center.
[
add
]
[
|
|
...
]