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Kansas not seeing any new positive H5N1 cases in dairy herds

A Kansas veterinarian says increased testing of raw milk hasn’t detected any positive cases of H5N1 in the state’s dairy herds.

“We’re doing multiple every week across the state, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed,” says Gregg Hanzlicek, associate director of the Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory,

He says the virus has been especially problematic this year.

“This is the first time where we’ve actually seen it in a different species, other than birds. There has been an uptick in our dairy herds across the United States,” he says. “Kansas had four herds positive last year in April. We haven’t had any positives since.”

A new federal order was introduced by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in December to increase milk testing and improve traceability of H5N1. Hanzlicek says the laboratory has expanded its reach beyond Kansas.

“We’re taking the overflows, first from Colorado and now California. We’re getting a lot of milk samples from them. We’re testing milk. We can also do nasal swab samples,” he says.

On Wednesday 15 more states, including Kansas, enrolled in the USDA’s National Milk Testing Strategy, bringing the total number of states in the program up to 28.

Other states that enrolled Wednesday include Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Iowa, Georgia, , Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia.