Category: Featured Headlines
Flu season is over, but there is a viral surge in California wastewater. Is it avian flu?
Los Angeles Times An unusual surge in flu viruses detected at wastewater treatment plants in California and other parts of the country is raising concerns among some experts that H5N1 bird flu may be spreading farther and faster than health officers initially thought. In the last several weeks, wastewater surveillance at 59 of 190 U.S. […]
May 14, 2024
Farmers will now get paid to test their dairy cows for bird flu
NBC News The federal government is putting up nearly $200 million to stop the spread of the virus and help experts get a better handle on just how widespread it is. Federal authorities on Friday pledged nearly $200 million in an attempt to control the spread of bird flu on dairy farms. Some of that money […]
May 14, 2024
Future Pandemics Will Have The Same Human Causes As Ancient Outbreaks
Discovery Magazine The changes that came with the transition from foraging to farming paved the way for disease. The last pandemic was bad, but COVID-19 is only one of many infectious diseases that emerged since the turn of this century. Since 2000, the world has experienced 15 novel Ebola epidemics, the global spread of a 1918-like influenza […]
May 14, 2024
Just One Human Is Infected by Bird Flu in the US. More Cases Are Likely
Bloomberg It’s spreading rapidly among cows. It’s also infecting skunks, mountain lions and red foxes. Yet as the highly contagious avian flu affects mammals across the US, just one human case has been reported so far. But that’s probably only because there is extremely limited testing of people underway to detect it. State governments and farm owners […]
May 8, 2024
Study of cow tissues provides clues for unusual pattern of bird flu infections in dairy cattle
STAT A different cow tissues may help to explain the pattern of illness being seen in the outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in U.S. dairy cattle — and also is sparking debate about the implications of the cow outbreak for human disease. The study, a preprint that hasn’t yet been through peer review by a scientific journal, […]
May 8, 2024
There’s no question H5N1 bird flu has ‘pandemic potential.’ How likely is that worst-case scenario?
CBC News: Unprecedented scale of outbreaks raises new concerns, scientists warn. As early as 1997, just a year after H5N1 was first discovered, there were warning signs this form of avian flu was capable of wreaking havoc far beyond birds. That year, poultry outbreaks in China and Hong Kong were linked to 18 human infections […]
May 7, 2024
STAT Jeremy Farrar, now the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, was working in Vietnam 20 years ago when the H5N1 virus started to spread across Asia — at that point in poultry. He recalls there was a reluctance among farmers to cull their chickens because they weren’t being compensated for them. Movement of infected birds […]
May 7, 2024
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus Infection in a Dairy Farm Worker
NEJM Sporadic human infections with highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) virus, with a wide spectrum of clinical severity and a cumulative case fatality of more than 50%, have been reported in 23 countries over more than 20 years.1 HPAI A(H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b viruses have spread widely among wild birds worldwide since 2020–2021,2,3 resulting in outbreaks in […]
May 7, 2024
New revelations in the mystery of the dolphin with the bird flu
Pasadena Star News Veterinarians previously thought dolphins had low susceptibility to flu infections — and dolphins don’t feed on birds. So biologists were highly concerned when a dolphin with the bird flu died in Florida. The infected dolphin was trapped between a dock and a seawall in the Big Bend region in March 2022. By […]
May 7, 2024
Two veterinarians, hundreds of miles apart, solved a cow sickness whodunit
Daily Montanan t appeared to be a problem with the food. In February, dairy cattle in multiple herds in northern Texas were suddenly producing less milk, and what they gave was abnormal and thick. And the typically voracious eaters had seemingly lost their appetites. For weeks in March, veterinarian Dr. Barb Petersen, who lives in […]
May 7, 2024