The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that dairy workers who’ve been exposed to bird flu should be tested for the virus even if they don’t have symptoms and be recommended Tamiflu to reduce their risk of getting sick. This comes at a time when a new report found asymptomatic bird flu infection in some workers.

According to a report in NBC News, these asymptomatic cases were discovered using blood, or serology, testing and seem to have been transmitted from sick animals, not people. Dr Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director during a media briefing said, “There is nothing that we’ve seen in the new serology data that gives us any concern about person-to-person transmission.”

This year, 46 people have been diagnosed with bird flu in the United States till now. All but one of those patients had been exposed to sick cattle or poultry on farms. Most of these cases have been reported in California (21), Washington (11) and Colorado (10).

According to the new study, the researchers looked at blood tests from workers at 115 dairy farms who were exposed to H5N1 over the summer in either Colorado or Michigan. Of those 115, eight (7%) had antibodies showing they’d been infected with the bird flu.

Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who heads the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases said “All eight reported milking cows or cleaning the milking parlor.” He added that masks and safety goggles were rare. Daskalakis said, “None wore respiratory protection, and less than half wore eye protection.”

Most of those who were infected said they had red and itchy eyes with drainage. However, four of the eight who were infected didn’t recall ever being sick.

Dr Shah said that the CDC is now “intensifying” recommendations meant to protect farmworkers. He added, “We in public health need to cast a wider net in terms of who is offered a test so that we can identify, treat and isolate those individuals.”

The new advice from the CDC is to test anyone with a significant bird flu exposure, such as an unprotected worker who’s been splashed in the face with raw milk on a dairy farm with known H5N1 infections in the herds.

Even if the person never feels ill, that worker should be tested and given the antiviral drug Tamiflu to reduce their risk of ever developing symptoms or passing the virus to close contacts.

According to the report in NBC News, Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health said that this is a move the CDC should have made months ago. Nuzzo said, “We’ve always suspected strongly and now have confirmation that that was going to miss people who are infected. This is very bad because one of these infections could turn out to be serious.”

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