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

According to a report by NBC News, these asymptomatic cases were discovered using blood, or serology, testing and appear to have been transmitted not from people, but from sick animals. “We haven’t seen anything in the new serology data that gives us any concern about person-to-person transmission,” Dr. Nirav Shah, CDC’s principal deputy director, said during a media briefing.

Bird flu has been diagnosed in 46 people in the United States so far this year. All but one of the patients had come in contact with 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, researchers looked at blood tests from 115 dairy farm workers who were exposed to H5N1 during the summer in Colorado or Michigan. Of those 115, eight (7%) had antibodies indicating they had been infected with bird flu.

“All eight reported milking cows or cleaning milking parlors,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, head of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Masks and safety goggles are in short supply, he said. “No one wore respiratory protection, and less than half wore eye protection,” Daskalakis said.

Most of those who were infected said that their eyes were red and itchy and had a burning sensation. However, four of the eight infected did not recall ever becoming sick.

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

The CDC’s new advice is to test anyone at severe risk of bird flu, such as an uninfected worker who may have had raw milk splashed in his face on a dairy farm and H5N1 infection in his herd.

Even if the person never feels sick, the employee should be tested and given the antiviral drug Tamiflu to reduce the risk of them ever developing symptoms or spreading the virus to close contacts.

Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Epidemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, said this is a step the CDC should have taken months ago, NBC News reported. “We have always strongly suspected and now it has been confirmed that those who are infected will be spared,” Nuzzo said. “This is very bad because one of these infections can be serious.”

Get the latest news live on Times Now with breaking news and top headlines from health and around the world.