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The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDRAD) today reported three more H5N1 avian flu outbreaks in dairy herds, noting that it will send results to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) for confirmation. Also, H5N1 has been detected in two domestic cats in South Dakota, neither of them from affected poultry farms or dairy farms, according to a notification from US government officials to the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH). (Schnirring, 5/20)

Scientists from the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center have managed to generate a full genetic sequence of H5N1 virus from milk, a development they suggest means commercially purchased milk products could be used to monitor the progress of the bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle and to check for important changes in the virus over time. (Branswell, 5/21)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Monday that it tested retail samples of milk and other dairy products in 17 states for viable bird flu virus, providing further details about the locations of the previously disclosed tests. The regulator said it collected 297 samples at retail locations in 17 states between April 18-22, but the retail samples represented products made at 132 processing locations in 38 states. (5/20)

As Dr. Sreyleak Luch drove to work the morning of Feb. 8, through busy sunbaked streets in Cambodia’s Mekong river delta, she played the overnight voice messages from her team. The condition of a 9-year-old boy she had been caring for had deteriorated sharply, and he had been intubated, one doctor reported. What, she wondered, could make the child so sick, so fast? “And then I just thought: H5N1,” she recalled. “It could be bird flu.” (Nolen, 5/20)

The bird flu virus that is spreading through American dairy cows can probably be traced back to a single spillover event. Late last year, scientists believe, the virus jumped from wild birds into cattle in the Texas panhandle. By this spring, the virus, known as H5N1, had traveled hundreds of miles or more, appearing on farms in Idaho, North Carolina and Michigan. The virus did not traverse those distances on its own. Instead, it hitched a ride with its hosts, the cows, moving into new states as cattle were transported from the outbreak’s epicenter to farms across the country. (Anthes and Qiu, 5/20)

As unnerving as H5N1’s current spread in cows might be, “I would be a whole lot more concerned if this was an event in pigs,” Richard Webby, the director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds, told me. Like cows, pigs share plenty of spaces with us. They also have a nasty track record with flu: Swine airways are evolutionary playgrounds where bird-loving flu viruses can convert—and have converted—into ones that prefer to infect us. (Wu, 5/20)