Avian influenza is gaining attention from medical watchdogs, including Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s Chief Medical Officer who ranked it as one of her greatest concerns heading into next year.

In the United States, veterinarians are critical of their federal government’s lack of measures to prevent the spread among dairy cattle when the first cows fell ill.

The scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned Dr. Keith Poulsen when he saw videos taken on a dairy farm where 

staff built a system to hydrate hundreds of cattle at once. In 14-hour shifts, dairy workers pumped gallons of electrolyte-rich fluids into ailing cows through metal tubes inserted into the esophagus.

“It was like watching a field hospital on an active battlefront treating hundreds of wounded soldiers,” he said.

The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 875 herds across 16 states, including Iowa, have tested positive.

Some veterinarians say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.

“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. 

“I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.”

So far there has been no spread from person to person, but it that happens, it could blossom into another pandemic.