Important Takeaways:
- Dozens of newly confirmed cases of avian influenza in wild birds and the first verified U.S. case of a new strain of the virus are raising concern the bird flu crisis may be entering a troubling new phase.
- Why it matters: While the developments don’t necessarily raise the risk of a pandemic, they could create more havoc for farmers, exacerbate egg shortages and expose more gaps in government disease surveillance.
- Driving the news: The Department of Agriculture last week confirmed 81 detections of highly pathogenic avian flu in wild birds collected across 24 states between Dec. 29 and Jan. 17.
- Wild birds can be infected and show no signs of illness, allowing them to spread the virus to new areas and potentially expose domestic poultry.
- Officials in Pennsylvania and New York have culled thousands of wild geese, as well as commercial poultry flocks, after detecting cases of flu.
- What they’re saying: “If you look at what’s happened the last eight weeks, the number of poultry operations that have gone down — and more recently, the duck operations — is absolutely stunning,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota told Axios.
- Catch up quick: The bird flu crisis has struck 113 flocks in the past 30 days, affecting more than 19 million birds, per USDA. It’s also been confirmed in 943 dairy herds, the vast majority in California.
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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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Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.’
Important Takeaways:
- Bird flu spreads to Southern California, infecting chickens, wild birds and other animals
- After proliferating globally, a historic wave of avian flu has entered Southern California, where it is worrying farmers and bird lovers and could add to complications with supply chains and food prices.
- In North America alone, an estimated 50 million birds have succumbed, which experts say is probably a vast undercount. And though government officials are primarily concerned about poultry farms, the epidemic has struck wild birds, too — from waterfowl to raptors and vultures.
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