Important Takeaways:
- California has declared a state of emergency for H5N1 bird flu amid fears that the virus could jump to people and start to spread.
- The move comes in response to a major outbreak of the virus among the state’s cattle which has spilled over and infected dozens of dairy workers.
- The announcement follows news that an individual in Louisiana was hospitalized with H5N1, becoming the country’s first severe case.
- The declaration of emergency gives California state and local resources to contain the outbreak, including hiring staff or issuing contracts for things like tests or personal protective equipment (PPE).
- Governor Gavin Newsom said the move would free up funds and ‘streamline and expedite’ the state’s efforts to tackle the outbreak.
- California has identified H5N1 in 645 dairy herds since its first detection in late August and nearly half of those were reported in the past 30 days, highlighting the rapid spread of the virus.
- Thirty-four of the US’ 61 human bird flu cases have also been in California
- Experts have described it as a pandemic ‘unfolding in slow motion.’
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Important Takeaways:
- According to several reports, stores around the U.S. are experiencing egg shortages, and states that require cage-free hens are particularly hard hit due to rising cases of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), also known as “bird flu.”
- CBS MoneyWatch. “Where we are hearing reports of shortages it’s at stores like a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe’s.”
- As CBS noted, more than 40% of America’s egg-laying hens are raised in cage-free environments, with 60% of bird flu cases involving cage-free farms.
- As of December 2, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 111,412,626 birds had been affected by bird flu across 49 states, which experts say is making eggs more expensive — not inflation.
- However, birds aren’t the only animals affected by the virus. As Food & Wine previously reported, the bird flu was also detected in a batch of raw milk sold in California, triggering a recall. It’s also been detected in a child in California, marking the first positive case of the illness in a child in U.S. history.
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Important Takeaways:
- California, the biggest U.S. milk-producing state, on Thursday confirmed two human cases of bird flu in people who had contact with dairy cattle infected by the virus.
- The cases bring total U.S. bird flu infections among people in contact with dairy cows and poultry to 15 this year.
- The virus’ jump to cattle in 14 states and infections of farm workers have concerned scientists and federal officials about the risks to humans from further spread.
- There is no known link or contact between the two human cases in California, suggesting only animal-to-human spread of the virus in the state, the California Department of Public Health said in a statement.
- It said neither person reported respiratory symptoms nor was hospitalized.
- Scientists are watching closely for signs that the virus has begun to spread more easily in people.
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday said it would begin testing raw cow’s milk intended for pasteurization at dairy plants to better understand the prevalence of the bird flu virus in milk.
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Important Takeaways:
- More health-care workers in contact with Missouri bird flu patient report respiratory symptoms
- One health-care worker who had symptoms had what investigators consider high-risk contact with the patient, meaning they provided care before the hospital advised taking precautions such as wearing a mask when tending to the patient.
- Three additional workers reportedly had low-risk contact with the patient after the hospital required precautions.
- None of these workers was tested at the time they experienced symptoms, the CDC reported Friday.
- It has been three weeks since the CDC and Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services announced that a person who had no contact with animals had tested positive for H5N1, the 14th human infection in the United States since April.
- None of the people in the US with a confirmed H5N1 infection is known to have infected other people. That would raise alarm because it would suggest that the virus was changing in ways that could allow it to more easily infect humans.
- The agency says the immediate risk to the public from H5N1 bird flu continues to be low.
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Important Takeaways:
- The state is not one of the 14 others that have reported outbreaks in dairy cattle
- Disease investigators have not been able to determine how a person in Missouri with no known exposures to animals or poultry became infected with an H5 bird flu virus, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
- But Nirav Shah said the ongoing investigation has turned up no evidence of onward spread of the virus, suggesting this case may turn out to be a one-off infection that defies explanation.
- “Here’s the bottom line: Our influenza surveillance system is designed to find needles in haystacks,” Shah said at a news briefing. “Here in this case, we found such a needle, but we don’t know how it got there. Our investigation continues, and we will keep everyone updated as we learn more.”
- It isn’t unheard of to have cases in which investigators fail to be able to trace a human infection with novel flu viruses back to a source of infection, Shah said, noting that of the more than 500 swine flu infections that have been detected in the U.S. since 2010, about 8% have been in people with no traceable contact with pigs or other infected people.
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Important Takeaways:
- A small study in Texas suggests that human bird flu cases are being missed on dairy farms where the H5N1 virus has taken off in cows, sparking an unprecedented nationwide outbreak.
- Authors of the study, led by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, went further, stating bluntly why the US is failing to fully surveil, let alone contain, a virus with pandemic potential.
- “Due to fears that research might damage dairy businesses, studies like this one have been few,” the authors write in the topline summary of their study, which was posted online as a pre-print and had not been peer-reviewed.
- The finding suggests human cases of H5N1 are going undetected. Moreover, managing to find evidence of two undetected infections in a sample of just 14 workers suggests it may not be hard to find more.
- To date, the virus has infected at least 175 dairy farms in 13 states. The official tally of human cases in the dairy outbreak is 14: four in dairy farm workers and 10 in workers on poultry farms with infections linked to the dairy outbreak.
- Experts are anxious that with each new infection, the wily H5N1 virus is getting new opportunities to adapt further to humans. If the virus evolves to cause more severe disease and spread from human to human, it could spark another pandemic.
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Important Takeaways:
- A new study provides evidence that a spillover of avian influenza from birds to dairy cattle across several U.S. states has now led to mammal-to-mammal transmission—between cows and from cows to cats and a raccoon.
- So far, 11 human cases have been reported in the U.S., with the first dating back to April 2022, each with mild symptoms: four were linked to cattle farms and seven have been linked to poultry farms, including an outbreak of four cases reported in the last few weeks in Colorado.
- “The concern is that potential mutations could arise that could lead adaptation to mammals, spillover into humans and potential efficient transmission in humans in the future,” Diel said.
- Sequencing also showed that the virus was transmitted to cats, a raccoon and wild birds that were found dead on affected farms. The cats and raccoon most likely became ill from drinking raw milk from infected cows.
- Though it isn’t known how the wild birds became infected, the researchers suspect it may have resulted from environmental contamination or aerosols kicked up during milking or cleaning of the milking parlors.
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Important Takeaways:
- A heatwave in Colorado likely caused personal protective equipment not to work correctly for workers culling poultry infected with H5N1, a highly pathogenic bird flu.
- Four people have tested positive for H5N1 and a fifth is also expected to have their case confirmed as bird flu, officials said this week.
- It’s the first time a cluster of human cases of bird flu has been reported in the US.
- In Colorado, the workers were culling a flock of egg-laying chickens that had tested positive for H5N1.
- And it can be dangerous to work in such close and prolonged quarters with animals infected with bird flu, which has a mortality rate of about 50% among people.
- It was 104F (40C) outside, but in the chicken houses, it was even hotter.
- “Across all areas, governments need to actively and urgently incorporate climate considerations into all health and safety measures more than simply at the surface level.”
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Important Takeaways:
- A bird flu pandemic is inevitable – and it’s only a matter of time before it strikes, according to former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield.
- Redfield’s comments come amid mounting concerns over the detection of the virus in dozens of cattle herds across the United States and the first reported human death in Mexico
- In a recent interview with NewsNation, Redfield expressed his belief that a bird flu pandemic is a high likely. “I really do think it’s very likely that we will, at some time,” he said. “It’s not a question of if; it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic.” He emphasized the significant mortality rate associated with the virus, with an estimation of a mortality rate of “somewhere between 25 and 50 percent,” in contrast to the 0.6 percent death rate observed in the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Redfield explained that the key to the virus’s ability to spread from human to human lies in the change of five specific amino acids in a critical receptor. Once the virus acquires this capacity, the pandemic could be unleashed. Redfield stated, “That’s when you’re going to have the pandemic. And as I said, I think it’s just a matter of time.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The WHO said it wasn’t clear how the man became infected, although H5N2 has been reported in poultry in Mexico.
- There are numerous types of bird flu. H5N2 is not the same strain that has infected multiple dairy cow herds in the U.S. That strain is called H5N1 and three farmworkers have gotten mild infections.
- Mexican health officials alerted the WHO that a 59-year-old man who died in a Mexico City hospital had the virus despite no known exposure to poultry or other animals.
- Mexico’s public health department said in a statement that he had underlying ailments, including chronic kidney failure, diabetes and high blood pressure.
- The WHO said the risk to people in Mexico is low, and that no further human cases have been discovered so far despite testing people who came in contact with the deceased at home and in the hospital.
- Health authorities are closely watching for any signs that the viruses are evolving to spread easily from person to person, and experts are concerned as more mammal species contract bird flu viruses.
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