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You're listening to the 1A podcast. I'm Jen White. And this is, in case you missed it, where we bring you some of the week's most interesting conversations you might have missed. Today, we're talking about highly pathogenic avian influenza, or H5N1. The virus has killed millions of birds and caused egg prices to soar since it was first detected in U.S. poultry in 2022. And the virus has since jumped to other mammals,

including people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed

973 dairy herds infected with bird flu as of February 21st and 70 cases among people in the

U.S. since March of last year. Cases of the avian flu and dairy cows in Nevada and Arizona have

scientists rethinking how the virus spreads. After a quick break, Apurva Mandivilli, science and

global health reporter at the New York Times, joins us to unpack the latest data on bird flu transmission. Back with more in a moment. Stay with us.

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Joining us from New York is Apurva Mandavili.

She's a science and global health reporter at the New York Times.

Apurva, welcome.

Thanks for having me.

So the bird flu spillover detected in dairy cows was identified using a new bulk milk

testing strategy recently implemented in the U.S.

How are these cases causing scientists to conclude that bird flu is now endemic in cows?

I think what we're seeing is that it's really widespread.

...