“I’m an Emergency Physician Keeping an Eye on Bird Flu. It’s Getting Dicey”
By Jeremy Samuel Faust
“All year, I’ve been keeping tabs on the H5N1 avian flu outbreak in dairy cattle and birds in the United States. As a frontline emergency physician, my stake in this is clear: I want to know if there is an imminent threat of a sustained deadly outbreak in people.
Until now, I’ve been concerned but not worried. That has changed recently. While nobody can predict what will come, I want to explain why my sense of unease has increased markedly in recent days.”
This isn’t the first time bird flu has circulated in animals, though the outbreak that began in 2024 is certainly the largest documented one. But that alone isn’t enough to warrant panic. An emerging potential epidemic demands our attention—and our full resources—when two features start changing for the worse: severity and transmissibility.”
to read the full article go to
https://slate.com/technology/2024/12/bird-flu-emergency-physician-worried-transmission-cases.html
“CDC Issues Update On Bird Flu ‘Mutations’ In Humans”
By Hannah Parry
“The CDC told Newsweek Monday that while bird flu’s current risk to the general public remains low, the agency is carefully monitoring for several red flags that could indicate that the virus could be on the verge of becoming a pandemic.
Those red flags include any outbreaks of bird flu that are spread from person-to-person, as well as evidence that the virus has mutated, making it easier for it to spread between humans.
“Identifying epidemiologically linked clusters of influenza A(H5N1) human cases might indicate the virus is better able to spread between humans,” a spokesperson from the CDC A(H5N1) Bird Flu Response team told Newsweek via email.
Increased cases of humans catching bird flu from animals may also indicate the virus “is adapting to spread more easily from animals to people,” they added.
to read the full article go to
https://www.newsweek.com/bird-flu-update-cdc-red-flags-2007711
“CDC Reports Potentially Troublesome Mutations in Bird Flu Found in Louisiana Patient”
By India Edwards
“Federal health officials have confirmed unsettling new details about the first United States case of severe bird flu, reported recently in a hospitalized patient in Louisiana….
Importantly, these mutations were observed in the later stages of infection and were not present in the virus samples taken from the backyard poultry flock that infected the patient, a media report from The New York Times shows.
This suggests that the changes occurred as the virus adapted to its human host, rather than spreading widely in nature, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an update published Dec. 26.
“Novel bird flu strain continues to threaten animal, public health”
By R. Scott Nolen and Malinda Larkin
“As the epizootic of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI, more specifically avian influenza type A H5N1) spreading globally approaches its fourth year, animal and public health officials are monitoring how quickly a new variant of the H5N1 virus—the clade 2.3.4.4b viruses—can jump to new animals, including people.
Given H5N1’s circulation among wild and migratory bird populations, along with clade 2.3.4.4b’s knack for infecting a broad range of mammalians species and the associated morbidity and mortality rates, experts worry H5N1 will eventually mutate into a lethal strain capable of human-to-human transmission, setting off another pandemic.”
to read the full article go to
https://www.avma.org/news/novel-bird-flu-strain-continues-threaten-animal-public-health
“Experts Lament ‘Anemic’ Response to H5N1, Worried About What 2025 Will Bring”
by Kristina Fiore
“This year, human cases of H5N1 bird flu ramped up in the U.S., particularly after the virus made its way into dairy cattle herds. In this report, experts share their concerns about what may happen with H5N1 in the year ahead.
The Biden administration’s response to H5N1 avian influenza, or bird flu, has been lackluster, and infectious disease experts said they are on edge about how the response to the virus will be handled in a second Trump administration
“I don’t think H5N1 has been managed very well in the Biden-Harris administration, and probably will only get worse during the Trump administration, if we can judge by some of their COVID policies, as well as some of the people who are going to be put in charge of agencies,” Amesh Adalja, MD, of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, told MedPage Today.
James Lawler, MD, MPH, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security in Omaha, agreed that the current response “has been incredibly anemic.”
to read the full article go to
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/uritheflu/113584
How Alarming Is the H5N1 Bird-Flu Mutation in Louisiana?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/h5n1-bird-flu-mutation-louisiana.html