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University of Nebraska Medical Center

USDA releases H5N1 bird flu genetic data eagerly awaited by scientists

STAT Helen Branswell

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has been under pressure from scientists both at home and abroad to share more data on the H5N1 bird flu outbreaks in dairy cows, uploaded a large number of genetic sequences of the pathogen late Sunday.

The excitement that news generated in the scientific community quickly gave way to frustration, though, when researchers who tried to start analyzing the sequences realized the files did not include any information about when the samples that generated the data were collected, or where. 

The expectation that the sequence data could help determine if the H5N1 virus has been changing as it transmitted from cow to cow and herd to herd gave way to a realization that it would do nothing of the sort.

“The sequences — they just all look like the [original] Texas sequences,” said Tom Peacock, a flu virologist at Imperial College, London. “For all we know, they are all the [original] Texas sequences.”

“The only date information is 2024. And that’s it.”

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