WastewaterSCAN Launches H5 Dashboard to Track Cases in U.S.

WastewaterSCAN has launched an H5 avian influenza wastewater dashboard, showing detections in about a dozen locations, mostly in Texas and Michigan. CIDRAP has the news.

The WastewaterSCAN group “developed an H5 probe to test wastewater and recently reported significant levels at three treatment plants in communities where H5N1 had been detected in cattle.” The test is not specific to H5N1 and can pick up “low-pathogenic H5 influenza viruses. Also, they cautioned that the test can't identify the species that shed the H5 virus or the source.”

Most of the positive detections, coming between May 7 and May 30, are from “sites in Michigan and Texas, two of the states hit hardest by H5N1 outbreaks in dairy cows.” The dashboard also shows a few detections “in states that haven’t reported H5N1 in dairy cows—Iowa and Minnesota.”

Meanwhile, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds issued a disaster proclamation in Cherokee County, which “allows state agency resources to assist with tracking and monitoring, rapid detection, containment, disposal, and disinfection.”