STAT recently spoke to Erica Pan, California’s state epidemiologist, about what public health officials are doing to monitor for human H5N1 infections. The conversation, which took place before California announced its human cases, has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Two dairy workers in California have been infected with the state’s first human cases of bird flu, federal and state health officials said. The late Thursday announcement of two confirmed

Although California dairy farmers anticipated a bird flu mortality rate of less than 2%, some say between 10% and 15% of infected cattle are dying.