Author: Claudinne Miller
How Bird Flu Became a Human Pandemic Threat
Scientific American The first hints that a new strain of avian illness is emerging could be found on this beach on Delaware Bay, where migrating birds flock. Here’s what virus detectives who return there every year know right now. H5N1 bird flu has been making a lot of headlines since last year, and for good […]
Jul 30, 2025
Gene-Swaps Could Let Influenza Jump Species
Scientific American Influenza viruses like bird flu can mix and match their genomes, and this has played a role in at least three of the last four flu pandemics. Influenza viruses are shifty entities. They accumulate small genetic changes on a regular basis, necessitating yearly updates to the flu vaccines because the prior year’s strain may not […]
Jul 30, 2025
What Would It Take for Bird Flu to Spread among Humans?
Scientific American H5N1 avian influenza has long been a concerning virus. Since its discovery in 1996 in waterfowl, bird flu has occasionally caused isolated human cases that have quite often been fatal. But last year H5N1 did something strange: it started infecting cattle. The absolute oddity of this leap may have been somewhat lost in the flood of […]
Jul 30, 2025
This Boise lab used to ship bird flu samples to CO. Now it gets results in hours
Idaho Statesman Since bird flu was first detected in Idaho cattle over a year ago, officials at the State Department of Agriculture have had to ship milk samples from dairies around the Gem State to laboratories in Utah, Colorado and Washington state for testing. The shipments delayed test results and response times to the highly […]
Jul 30, 2025
Avian Flu Wiped Out Poultry. Now the Screwworm Is Coming for Beef.
NYT The parasitic fly that attacks warm-blooded animals was eliminated from the United States in the 1960s, but it’s creeping toward the Texas-Mexico border. First came bird flu, which led to the culling of large swaths of the nation’s poultry flocks and the soaring egg prices that helped undermine President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s re-election. […]
Jul 30, 2025
Cambodia reports 14th human H5N1 bird flu infection in 2025
BNO News Cambodia has confirmed a new human case of H5N1 avian influenza in a 26-year-old man who is currently receiving intensive medical treatment, according to health officials. It is the country’s 14th confirmed human case of H5N1 this year. The man, from Kravan village in Siem Reap Province, tested positive for the virus on […]
Jul 30, 2025
Top White House pandemic preparedness official resigns, officials say, in sign of broader disarray
STAT When reports circulated in February that the White House had selected biosecurity expert Gerald Parker as the head of its Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, there was palpable relief among infectious disease experts. As former commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, his reported appointment seemed to speak to both the […]
Jul 30, 2025
Remembering David Nabarro: ‘a great champion of global health and health equity’
NPR Sir David Nunes Nabarro, a physician, international public health advocate and one of the early experts helping with the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, died on Friday at age 75. “David was a great champion of global health and health equity, and a wise, generous mentor to countless individuals,” WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus […]
Jul 30, 2025
The lessons New York still has not learned from the Covid vaccine rollout
STAT As Covid-19 has receded from everyday life, New Yorkers — and Americans more generally — haven’t shown much interest in poring over their governments’ pandemic-era performance. In 2024, congressional Republicans released a deeply partisan Covid-19 report, focused on issues like the lab-leak origin theory. But there has been little neutral analysis of real-time policy decisions […]
Jul 30, 2025
COVID infection early in pandemic linked to higher risk of cancer death, CU study finds
Denver Post Cancer survivors infected with COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic had a higher risk of dying from dormant cells reawakening, Colorado researchers found, though they don’t know whether people who get the virus now face the same risk. Experiments in mice found that genetically modified animals were more likely to have signs of […]
Jul 30, 2025