A health officer collects ducks to be killed at a farm north of Bangkok during Thailand's bird flu outbreak in the early 2000s. A massive culling of fowl was part of the country's strategy to quash the virus. Stringer/AFP/via Getty Images hide caption
62 million.
Thats the number seared in Prasert Auewarakuls memory. It is the number of birds mostly chickens that were dead by the end of Thailands avian flu outbreak that started in late 2003. Some died of the disease, others were culled to prevent the virus from spreading.
It was very bad. Most of the farmers lost everything, says Dr. Auewarakul, a virologist at Mahidol University in Thailand.
Now, two decades later, the U.S. is grappling with its own avian flu outbreak. And this time the virus has taken a new twist.
In late March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the H5N1 virus, which is periodically found in farmed poultry, had been identified in dairy cows in two states the first time scientists have detected a spillover to cattle.
Now, 92 herds spread across a dozen states have been infected, according to the World Health Organization. And the virus has spread to humans as well. Three farm workers have contracted the virus this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, the virus has not shown the ability to spread easily between humans.
This outbreak has led some scientists and public health experts to look at past avian flu outbreaks.
There are so many lessons that we have learned, says Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, interim director for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention at the World Health Organization.
And the stakes are high. While there have been relatively few human cases of H5N1 roughly 900 more than half of them have been fatal.
In December 2003 in Thailand, flocks of chickens were mysteriously dying. This was particularly problematic because Thailand was one of the worlds main poultry exporters, producing about a billion chickens a year. About 400,000 people were employed in the industry.
By January 2004, the authorities had the answer: avian flu.
While nobody knows for sure, Auewarakul says, the virus likely jumped from wild waterfowl to domesticated chickens. The effect was devastating. The virus can easily wipe out a flock of chickens in a matter of days. About 20 people in Thailand also fell sick and 13 of them died from 2003 to 2005.
Officials sprang into action to save Thailands poultry industry and prevent more spread to humans. Infected flocks and nearby flocks as well were culled (the government paid farmers for the loss).
And then Thailand reinvented its poultry industry. The movement of live poultry to market, for example was severely restricted. Farm hygiene was dramatically improved. A nationwide surveillance system was launched, including a network of village health volunteers who reported sick birds.
Perhaps the biggest and most lasting change, Auewarakul says, is that this outbreak abruptly accelerated the transition from backyard chicken farmers to large-scale industrialized poultry farms. He says this was a big cultural transition since chickens had been part of everyday life for many Thai families.
They were raised like pets, like you would raise your dog, he says. But small farms disappeared and big companies with biosecurity systems stayed. More recently, he notes, some backyard farms have returned. But the big farms still dominate the market.
In these big farms chickens often spend their lives entirely indoors. This lifestyle means theres almost no intermingling with wild waterfowl and contact between flocks. Plus, the farms have instituted lots of protocols for who gets to go in and how.
People don't go in and out that much, Auewarakul says. When people go in, they have to disinfect themselves before and after visiting the poultry areas.
The shift to these industrialized farms has not fully eliminated avian flu in chickens, but the disease has been largely contained. With ongoing monitoring, cases are often identified early and dealt with before the virus can gain a foothold.
Other countries grappled with avian flu at the same time and managed to control their outbreaks: Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and Vietnam in Asia and the Netherlands, for example. Auewarakul says a similar approach to Thailands a combo of culling, surveillance and limits on the movement of animals has been a success.
I remember in 2003, literally, countries were saying, We killed a million birds today. And you don't hear that happening anymore because of the responses that were put in place, says Andrew Pekosz, professor of microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The answer is yes and no and its not just because chickens cluck and cows moo.
Certain strategies like widespread culling when an outbreak is detected are unlikely to apply to cows.
What has to be remembered here and I think this is very important is that cattle are worth huge amounts of money, says Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the health emergencies program at WHO.
An individual chicken is valued at less than $10 while a lone lactating cow sells for close to $2,000, says veterinary doctor Pamula Ruegg, a professor at Michigan State University and editor of the Journal of Dairy Science Communications. So the bar for culling cattle is much higher. And a cattle cull would have a more severe economic impact on farmers, since cows dont produce milk until they are about two years old while chickens lay eggs in a matter of months.
Whats more, H5N1 can decimate a flock of chickens another pro-cull argument back in 2004. Thats not so for cows, whose symptoms are far milder, including a drop in milk production and loss of appetite.
We're not killing cattle. We don't have to. Everything we've seen and all the preliminary data suggests they recover pretty rapidly, says Ruegg.
As for keeping cows indoors, Ruegg says that while there are some indoor facilities for dairy herds, they tend to fare better when there's access to the outdoors.
Still both Pekosz and Auewarakul say a lot can be learned from how clean poultry farms have become.
In countries around the world, a lot of their poultry workers have significant amounts of protective gear. Sometimes its a face shield, a pair of gloves that you change frequently, a pair of boots that you can disinfect periodically, explains Pekosz. Some of the workers shower upon entering the chicken area and leaving it. The goal is simple: Dont bring any viruses in or out.
These strategies have all been shown to be incredibly effective in limiting human infections but also limiting the spread of a pathogen from one farm to another, from one flock to another, from one herd to another, he says, noting that farm workers, delivery drivers, veterinarians and others may visit multiple farms.
The CDC has recommended protective gear for U.S. dairy farmers in the wake of the current outbreak to but, Pekosz says, theres not been widespread compliance. He says that could be because of a lack of training, because its hard to change habits or because cow farms are run differently than chicken farms.
Ruegg says practices have to be specifically adapted to dairy farms. For example, she suggests glasses instead of face shields. It'd be really easy for those full [face] shields to fog up when you're working [in a milking parlor], she says.
Jamie Jonker, chief science officer for the National Milk Producers Federation, adds that one of his priorities is making sure to sanitize milking machines between cows because the virus has been found in high concentrations in raw milk.
The other lesson that can be learned from the poultry industrys history with avian flu is the importance of farmer buy-in.
One way Thailand did it was to ensure reasonable compensation for farmers who lost their flocks to disease or culling 100% of the animals value early on, then later 75%.
Pekosz would like to see the U.S. reassure farmers they don't lose financially if their cows are tested and found to be infected. Thats really important to making sure we get more access to these farms so we can get a better understanding of the extent and magnitude of this outbreak, he says.
While Maurice Pitesky isnt opposed to borrowing from the pasts avian flu playbook, he says, its also necessary to write a new chapter.
Pitesky who studies avian flu at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine says that two decades ago when Thailand was developing its strategy, there was one main threat: Wild waterfowl introducing the virus. Now, we're dealing with an entire ecosystem issue, he says.
Thats because in the past few years, H5N1 outbreaks have traveled far beyond chickens and cows. The virus has shown up on six continents and in a slew of wild and domestic mammals, from tigers and mink to cats and dogs. All in all, H5N1 has been reported in more than 48 mammal species across 26 different countries, according to a peer-reviewed journal published by the CDC. In South America, its caused the death of more than 17,000 elephant seals. Earlier this month, house mice in New Mexico tested positive for the virus.
It's hard to see how this will ever not be an endemic disease at this point, says Pitesky.
He says this will mandate new strategies that go far beyond the farm gates.
We've never had anything like this before, Pitesky says.
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Bird flu is spreading in cattle herds in the US in a surprising development that's worrying scientists. There's no evidence the virus can cause a human outbreak, but authorities are keeping a close eye on the situation. What do we know about the H5N1 virus and how worried should we be?
Bird flu is a disease caused by a virus that infects birds and sometimes other animals, such as foxes, seals and otters.
The major strain - circulating among wild birds worldwide - is a type of the virus known as H5N1. It emerged in China in the late 1990s.
Bird migration has led to outbreaks in domestic and wild birds. The virus has in very rare cases infected humans.
Scientists say the current risk to humans is low. Transmission from birds to humans is rare and there has been no sustained human-to-human transmission.
There is no way to predict whether avian flu will trigger a pandemic in humans, but experts are monitoring its spread and studying how it is changing and evolving.
Image source, Getty Images
The virus's jump into cattle astounded scientists, who thought cows weren't susceptible to it.
It comes amid another unusual development: In early June, a 59-year-old man in Mexico died with another type of bird flu - H5N2- which had never before been recorded in people. It is unclear how he got it, although there have been cases in some poultry farms in Mexico.
Health bodies such as the World Health Organization and the CDC consider the overall public health risk from bird flu to be low. But scientists say we need to keep a close eye on the spread of the virus.
"This case is one more in a series of developments that collectively could be considered a red flag," says Professor Sir Peter Horby, director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford.
H5N1 has been on scientists' radar for the past few years, with the virus spreading across all continents. Thousands of outbreaks have been recorded in poultry and wild birds.
There have been outbreaks in animals farmed for their fur, including mink.
The virus has also been detected in foxes, bears, otters, raccoons, cats, dogs, goats and others.
"It's a virus that's on the march so we've been watching it with concern for that reason," says Dr Ed Hutchinson, Senior Lecturer, MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research.
Image source, Getty Images
Flu viruses are known for their ability to shape-shift, picking up genes and changing over time as they move outside their natural host.
Scientists are watching closely for signs H5N1 might gain a sustained foothold outside poultry and wild birds.
Finding the virus in cattle was "a real shock", says Dr Hutchinson.
"When it turns up in an animal where large numbers of them are farmed and therefore in close proximity with humans that immediately is a reason for paying close attention to it."
Scientists think the route of transmission is what they call "artificial" - the cows are not passing it to one another through natural contact and it probably isn't transmitting in airborne particles from cow to cow.
Instead, they think all the transmission is happening in milking parlours. "It looks like it's through contaminated milking machinery," explains Dr Thomas Peacock from the Pirbright Institute.
This means that the virus, at the moment, doesn't have the ability to spread naturally from animal to animal. The longer it does go on spreading through dairy herds though, Dr Peacock says, the higher the chance that it evolves in a way that would allow it to do that.
There have been cases of humans catching H5N1 from time to time, usually from contact with sick animals, in several countries, including Cambodia, Chile, China, Vietnam, Australia, USA and the UK.
A few hundred human cases have been reported since 1997, around half of whom died.
Image source, Getty Images
More recently, there have been a few cases in US dairy workers, who had only mild symptoms.
Many US states are investing in preventative measures, like protective clothing and goggles for farm workers.
Experts studying the virus say there's no evidence it has morphed into a form that would pose a big threat to humans.
Virologist Tom Peacock says the more that it spreads across the US, the higher the chance that the virus gets into humans.
And, importantly, the higher the chance that it gets into waterfowl - ducks and geese.
"That's what we're worried about," he tells the BBC. "Because [those birds] are the ones that one are very susceptible to this, and they seem to be the ones that carry it very large distances.
Some countries are discussing deploying vaccines or are working to secure supplies.
But with only limited supplies available, any vaccine campaign would be limited, with doses distributed to front line workers including poultry farmers, veterinarians, scientists who study the virus, and people who work on fur farms housing animals like mink and fox.
Image source, Getty Images
Dr Jayna Raghwani, a biologist from the UK's Royal Veterinary College, points out that, in terms of designing new avian flu vaccines, we are relatively well prepared.
"We don't have to start from scratch with an influenza virus," she says. "And we have a good understanding of how those [existing flu vaccines] work in order to raise an immune response and be protective.
"In an ideal world," she adds, there would be more surveillance for the virus close to farms.
"We could do more general monitoring of wildlife close to places we know outbreaks are occurring and more in domestic animals," Dr Raghwani says, "to better understand how the virus changes between species."
"I don't want to downplay concerns about the influenza [circulating in cows]," says Dr Raghwani. "But if I was talking to my mum or my grandma about the risk to humans, I would say 'don't worry'."
Dr Hutchinson puts it this way: "It's not February 2020 but it does demand our close attention. There are definite risks associated with this and they might not go anywhere but we'd be very foolish not to pay attention to them."
In the US, a dairy-farm worker develops itching, blood-shot eyes. In Australia, a young girl falls ill after a foreign holiday and is rushed to hospital. In Mexico, another man, already ill and bed-bound, becomes seriously unwell and dies. Each of these recent cases was caused by a different strain of influenza virus. In each case, it was an animal virus, which should not normally have turned up in humans at all. Should stories like this worry us?
When stories like this hit the news (and for influenza viruses, this happens quite often), journalists write to virologists and ask: how worried are you about this one?
The honest answer is that how any virologist really feels about a story depends on a lot of things, including our personalities: some of us are natural optimists, while others tend to catastrophise. But our professional background does give us an idea of what to look for in a news story about a novel virus. When you next read about a novel virus in the news yourself, these are the questions that can help you decide how much of a worry it might be.
This is usually the first question. Its actually really hard for a virus to adapt to growing well in a new host species. Even influenza viruses basically bird viruses, but notorious for causing repeated human pandemics only manage it every few decades.
For a virus, crossing into people from a different animal host is a staged process. (Im writing people, but its the same logic if youre worried about a virus crossing between any two host species, say, bird flu adapting to spread in cattle.)
Have people been exposed to the new virus and developed immune responses, but with no signs of infection? If there has been a spillover infection of a human (whether or not this caused serious illness), is there any sign that the virus has adapted enough to spread onwards to other people? And if the virus is now spreading among people, is that spread still at a point where it can be contained?
Surveillance is hard work that requires resources and cooperation, but it is hugely important in understanding and controlling outbreaks. So what do we look for?
Testing people for immune responses to a virus (serology) tells us who has previously been exposed. Sequencing viral genomes (from infected people or from the environment) tells us where the virus is now, but it also lets us work out how it is spreading and how it is changing.
We can do this because viruses mutate quickly. Lining up the differences in their genetic sequences lets us build family trees (phylogenetic trees), which we can use to reconstruct how the virus got to particular places at particular times.
Are we looking at one big outbreak or lots of separate outbreaks? Family trees can show us this. Looking at the changes in the virus genome also lets us look for any telltale signs that it is adapting to a new species assuming we understand the virus well enough to work that out.
The better we understand a virus, the more we can anticipate what it might do next. For some very well-studied viruses, like the influenza viruses, we know some of the genetic changes that are warning signs of adaptation to a new host species.
What else can we look for? We worry more about viruses jumping between similar host species, because this is easier for the virus to do. Influenza thats already in a mammal is closer to being able to infect us than influenza from a bird.
We can look at likely routes of transmission a respiratory virus is likely to spread more quickly than a virus spread through sexual contact. We can also try to guess at the outcomes of infection viruses that cause serious disease are concerning, but in terms of spread, we also worry about less serious cases, which could lead to people spreading the virus without realising it.
However, viruses are tricky things, and in practice, its really hard to predict what they will do.
The current outbreak of H5N1 influenza A viruses in cattle is a good example of this. An influenza A virus infecting cattle and then spreading through milk were both huge surprises. And while H5N1 is known to be capable of causing very severe disease, it seems that some cattle are carrying the virus without serious illness.
Experimental virology, in which animals and cell cultures are infected and studied under controlled conditions in secure laboratories, can be essential for understanding what a virus is really capable of.
Adapting to humans is hard for a virus, so anything that gives a virus more chances to pull this off is a concern. Sustained outbreaks are more of a risk than one-off cases.
We worry more about viruses in animals with close contact with humans. H5N1 spreading in North American cattle is more worrying than H5N1 spreading in South American elephant seals.
We worry about viruses taking shortcuts to adapting. For influenza viruses, this can happen in hosts like pigs that can pick up more than one virus at the same time and allow them to swap bits of their genome with each other.
And we worry about people doing anything that gives a virus more chances to get used to them. Things like drinking unpasteurised milk in areas where it could carry H5N1 influenza viruses, for example.
What would happen if things did get worse? Do we already have vaccines to this virus or to one very like it? Is there the capacity for making large numbers of those vaccines and distributing them to large numbers of people? Do we already have antiviral drugs? Do we know whats needed to manage the symptoms caused by the virus effectively? Here, at least, it helps to face a virus like influenza that weve already been trying to fight for a long time.
The spread of a new strain of influenza virus around the world is just one of many viral threats, but the H5N1 strain of the virus has been doing a lot of things recently that cause us, as virologists, to watch it with concern.
While isolated cases can be devastating for the people involved, the bigger risk to society comes from viruses that spread and H5N1 influenza is now spreading, in US cattle as well as in birds around the world. Importantly though, what it is not doing at the moment is anything that we would associate with it spreading among humans.
The current mood among virologists is definitely not what it was in, for example, February 2020, when it became clear that SARS-CoV-2 was spreading uncontrollably among humans. But bird flu is doing enough concerning things at the moment to make us pay close attention to it. Hopefully, if we do that, we can all prevent things becoming a lot more worrying than they are now.
NEW YORK (AP) In the last two years, bird flu has been blamed for the deaths of millions of wild and domestic birds worldwide. Its killed legions of seals and sea lions, wiped out mink farms, and dispatched cats, dogs, skunks, foxes and even a polar bear.
But it seems to have hardly touched people.
Thats a little bit of a head scratcher, although there are some likely explanations, said Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. It could have to do with how infection occurs or because species have differences in the microscopic docking points that flu viruses need to take root and multiply in cells, experts say.
But what keeps scientists awake at night is whether that situation will change.
Theres a lot we dont understand, said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director who currently heads Resolve to Save Lives, a not-for-profit that works to prevent epidemics. I think we have to get over the hope for the best and bury our head in the sand approach. Because it could be really bad.
Some researchers theorize that flu viruses that originated in birds were the precursors to terrible scourges in humans, including pandemics in 1918 and 1957. Those viruses became deadly human contagions and spread in animals and people.
A number of experts think its unlikely this virus will become a deadly global contagion, based on current evidence. But thats not a sure bet.
Just in case, U.S. health officials are readying vaccines and making other preparations. But they are holding off on bolder steps because the virus isnt causing severe disease in people and they have no strong evidence its spreading from person to person.
The flu thats currently spreading known as H5N1 was first identified in birds in 1959. It didnt really begin to worry health officials until a Hong Kong outbreak in 1997 that involved severe human illnesses and deaths.
It has caused hundreds of deaths around the world, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected birds. When there was apparent spread between people, it involved very close and extended contact within households.
Like other viruses, however, the H5N1 virus has mutated over time. In the last few years, one particular strain has spread alarmingly quickly and widely.
In the United States, animal outbreaks have been reported at dozens of dairy cow farms and more than 1,000 poultry flocks, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Four human infections have been reported among the hundreds of thousands of people who work at U.S. poultry and dairy farms, though that may be an undercount.
Worldwide, doctors have detected 15 human infections caused by the widely circulating bird flu strain. The count includes one death a 38-year-old woman in southern China in 2022 but most people had either no symptoms or only mild ones, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Theres no way to know how many animals have been infected, but certain creatures seem to be getting more severe illnesses.
Take cats, for example. Flu is commonly thought of as a disease of the lungs, but the virus can attack and multiply in other parts of the body too. In cats, scientists have found the virus attacking the brain, damaging and clotting blood vessels and causing seizures and death.
Similarly gruesome deaths have been reported in other animals, including foxes that ate dead, infected birds.
The flu strains ability to lodge in the brain and nervous system is one possible reason for higher mortality rate in some species, said Amy Baker, an Iowa-based U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist who studies bird flu in animals. But scientists just dont know what the properties of the virus or the properties of the host are that are leading to these differences, Baker said.
Unlike cats, cows have been largely spared. Illnesses have been reported in less than 10% of the cows in affected dairy herds, according to the USDA. Those that did develop symptoms experienced fever, lethargy, decreased appetite and increased respiratory secretions.
Cow infections largely have been concentrated in the udders of lactating animals. Researchers investigating cat deaths at dairy farms with infected cows concluded the felines caught the virus from drinking raw milk.
Researchers are still sorting out how the virus has been spreading from cow to cow, but studies suggest the main route of exposure is not the kind of airborne droplets associated with coughing and sneezing. Instead its thought to be direct contact, perhaps through shared milking equipment or spread by the workers who milk them.
Then theres the issue of susceptibility. Flu virus need to be able to latch onto cells before they can invade them.
If it doesnt get into a cell, nothing happens. The virus just swims around, explained Juergen Richt, a researcher at Kansas State University.
But those docking spots sialic acid receptors arent found uniformly throughout the body, and differ among species. One recent study documented the presence of bird flu-friendly receptors in dairy cattle mammary glands.
Eye redness has been a common symptom among people infected by the current bird flu strain. People who milk cows are eye level with the udders, and splashes are common. Some scientists also note that the human eye has receptors that the virus can bind to.
A study published this month found ferrets infected in the eyes ended up dying, as the researchers demonstrated that the virus could be as deadly entering through the eyes as through the respiratory tract.
Why didnt the same happen in the U.S. farmworkers?
Some experts wonder whether people have some level of immunity, due to past exposure to other forms of flu or to vaccinations. However, a study in which human blood samples were exposed to the virus indicated theres little to no existing immunity to this version of the virus, including among people whod had seasonal flu shots.
A more menacing question: What happens if the virus mutates in a way that makes it more lethal to people or allows it to spread more easily?
Pigs are a concern because they are considered ideal mixing vessels for bird flu to potentially combine with other flu viruses to create something more dangerous. Baker has been studying the current strain in pigs and found it can replicate in the lungs, but the disease is very mild.
But that could all change, which is why theres a push in the scientific community to ramp up animal testing.
Frieden, of Resolve to Save Lives, noted public health experts have been worried about a deadly new flu pandemic for a long time.
The only thing predictable about influenza is its unpredictable, he said.
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An expert has answers for you about avian flu.
Since it was first detected in birds in late 2021, avian flu has killed millions of poultry and infected animals that were previously thought to be immune, including dairy cows. The FDA has documented the H5N1 virus in animals in 48 states.
Yet only 27 people worldwide have been infected since the outbreak began, and only four have been in the US. That suggests the risk to humans remains relatively lowfor now. Why? And what early warning signs could point to an increasing risk?
Stylianos Bournazos, a research associate professor in the Leonard Wagner Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology at Rockefeller University, headed by Jeffrey V. Ravetch. Bournazos and his colleagues have been tasked with a crucially important project: the development of a universal influenza vaccine that protects against every flu strainthose currently circulating and any yet to emerge.
Here he explores what you need to knowand how worried you should be:
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The former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Robert Redfield, has said that the next pandemic could be from bird flu.
The World Health Organization recently announced the first human death from bird flu in Mexico, and the virus has been found in cattle across the US.
I really do think its very likely that we will, at some time, its not a question of if, its more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic, Redfield told NewsNation on Friday.
He added that the mortality rate is likely to be much higher from bird flu compared to Covid-19.
While the mortality rate was 0.6 per cent for Covid-19, Redfield said the mortality for the bird flu would probably be somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent.
In late May, the CDC found the third case of a person diagnosed with bird flu since March, The Hill reported. The three cases were found in farmworkers but were unrelated, with symptoms including a cough and pink eye.
Theres nothing to suggest that the virus is spreading between humans.
Researchers have found that five amino acids have to change their key receptor in order for bird flu to have the disposition to connect to a human receptor. It would subsequently be able to spread between humans like Covid-19.
Once the virus gains the ability to attach to the human receptor and then go human to human, thats when youre going to have the pandemic, Redfield told NewsNation.
I think its just a matter of time, he added.
Redfield said that he doesnt know how long it will take for the necessary amino acids to change, but he added that hes concerned about it being detected in cattle across the states.
More than 40 cattle herds have been found to have the virus. The CDC is following wastewater treatment sites to figure out where the virus is located but it has said that the current risk to the public remains low.
While cattle live in the vicinity of pigs, and the virus can evolve from pigs to humans, Redfield argued that the more severe risk is that the virus could be grown in a lab.
I know exactly what amino acids I have to change because in 2012, against my recommendation, the scientists that did these experiments actually published them, he told NewsNation. So, the recipe for how to make bird flu highly infectious for humans is already out there.
A 4-year-old in Bengaluru was infected with H9N2 bird flu. As per health experts, he recovered after suffering from fever, abdominal cramps and respiratory issues. In this article, we have shared few signs of the new bird flu variant that you should be aware of.
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed a case of Avina influenza, commonly known as bird flu, in a four-year-old child from West Bengal, India. This marks the second human infection with a H9N2 strain of bird flu reported in India since 2019. Speaking to the media, health officials have confirmed that the child has now recovered and was discharged from hospital.
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Scroll down to learn more about the H9N2 Avian Influenza virus, its types, causes and symptoms in humans.
H9N2 Avian Flu is a branch of the Influenza A virus that primarily targets poultry birds such as chickens and turkeys. It is also capable of affecting humans. In 1992, the first H9N2 cases in humans popped up in Hong Kong and since then the variant has been a kind of bird flu common across regions such as Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
The common symptoms of H9N2 Avian Flu Virus in humans can be:
As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), the virus can spread via Coming into direct contact with infected birds or their droppings is the primary way H9N2 Avian Flu Variant spreads. It is less common, but technically possible, for it to transmit from human to human, particularly in settings where close contact is prevalent."
Well, to prevent infection, it's important to practice good personal hygiene, follow proper food safety guidelines and stay steer clear of sick birds.
Published Date:June 18, 2024 1:13 PM IST
Updated Date:June 18, 2024 1:13 PM IST
Concerns about a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza virus or bird flu in American dairy cattle and its potential for transferal to humans, prompted a research collaboration between the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, the University of Edinburghs Roslin Institute, the Pirbright Institute and the UK Animal & Plant Health Agency, to investigate whether pasteurisation temperatures, if applied for industry standard times, should effectively inactivate H5N1 influenza viruses in cows milk and render it safe to consume.This ongoing outbreak the first time a virus of this sort has spread in cattle led to high levels of potentially dangerous virus being shed into milk in some parts of the USA, raising concerns including the risk of the virus being able to adapt to humans and cause a new pandemic.
Ed Hutchinson, Senior Lecturer at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research and the corresponding author of the study, said: Given the worries surrounding the H5N1 outbreak in dairy cattle in the United States, and the discovery of the virus in cows milk, we urgently needed to answer the question of whether pasteurisation made milk safe.
We have now rigorously tested this, showing that the temperatures used in pasteurisation should rapidly inactivate all influenza viruses. However, we also found that influenza viruses remained infectious in raw (unpasteurised) milk. Raw milk is already known to carry a variety of pathogens, and we would particularly caution people against drinking it in areas of the USA where cattle might be infected with H5N1 influenza. Human infections with H5N1 influenza viruses have the potential to be very dangerous and they also give the virus more opportunities to adapt to transmitting between humans. Pasteurisation of milk in affected areas is a good way to minimise these risks.
He added that assessments on unpasteurised cheeses, raw milk yoghurt or other unpasteurised dairy products would progress understanding of how this virus is spreading among cattle in the USA, and given the global distribution of H5N1 in birds, whether similar outbreaks could take place in farmed animals elsewhere in the world.
Dr Jenna Schafers, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh Roslin Institute and a joint lead author of the study, said:This team effort from a consortium of researchers across the UK has shown that pasteurisation temperatures rapidly inactivate H5N1 influenza viruses, which is reassuring. Our ability to respond quickly to this urgent question highlights the importance of collaboration across organisations to rapidly respond to novel issues, which is of particular importance in the post-pandemic era.
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Anthony Fauci book 'On Call' reflects on COVID-19, Trump and public service Over the course of his decades-long career in public health, Fauci vowed he would never shy away from speaking truth the U.S. president even when it was inconvenient. Fauci's memoir is On Call.
Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Select Subcommittee on June 3. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption
For much of the past four years, Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the public face of the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic a status that garnered him gratitude from some, and condemnation from others.
For Fauci, speaking what he calls the inconvenient truth is part of the job. He spent 38 years heading up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, during which time he advised seven presidents on various diseases, including AIDS, Ebola, SARS and COVID-19.
Fauci still recalls the advice he received when he first went to the White House to meet President Reagan: A colleague told him to pretend each visit to the West Wing would be his last.
And what he meant is, you should say to yourself that I might have to say something either to the president or to the president's advisers they may not like to hear, Fauci explains. And then that might lead to your not getting asked back again. But that's OK, because you've got to stick with always telling the truth to the best of your capability.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci clashed repeatedly with President Trump. "He really wanted, understandably, the outbreak to essentially go away," Fauci says of Trump. "So he started to say things that were just not true."
Fauci says Trump downplayed the seriousness of the virus, refused to wear a mask and claimed (falsely) that hydroxychloroquineoffered protection against COVID-19. "And [that] was the beginning of a situation that put me at odds, not only with the president, but more intensively with his staff," Fauci says. "But ... there was no turning back. I could not give false information or sanction false information for the American public."
Fauci retired from the NIH in 2022. In his new memoir, On Call: A Doctors Journey in Public Service, he looks back on the COVID-19 pandemic and reflects on decades of managing public health crises.
On appearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic to answer questions about the pandemic response
If you look at the hearing itself it, unfortunately, is a very compelling reflection of the divisiveness in our country. I mean, the purpose of hearings, or at least the proposed purpose of the hearing, was to figure out how we can do better to help prepare us and respond to the inevitability of another pandemic, which almost certainly will occur. But if you listened in to that hearing on the Republican side was a vitriolic ad hominem and a distortion of facts, quite frankly. As opposed to trying to really get down to how we can do better in the future. It was just attacks about things that were not founded in reality.
On his interactions with President Trump concerning COVID-19
He is a very complicated figure. We had a very interesting relationship. ... I don't know whether it was the fact that he recognized me as kind of a fellow New Yorker, but he always felt that he wanted to maintain a good relationship with me. And even when he would come in and start saying, "Why are you saying these things? You got to be more positive. You got to be more positive." And he would get angry with me. But then at the end of it, he would always say, "We're OK, aren't we? I mean, we're good. Things are OK," because he didn't want to leave the conversation thinking that we were at odds with each other, even though many in his staff at the time were overtly at odds with me, particularly the communication people. ... So it was a complicated issue. There were times when you think he was very favorably disposed, and then he would get angry at some of the things that I was saying, even though they were absolutely the truth.
On reading reports of a mysterious illness afflicting gay men in 1981 (which later became known as AIDS)
I knew I was dealing with a brand new disease. ... The thing that got me goosebumps is that this was totally brand new and it was deadly, because the young men we were seeing, they were so far advanced in their disease before they came to the attention of the medical care system, that the mortality looked like it was approaching 100%. So that, you know, spurred me on to ... totally change the direction of my career, to devote myself to the study of what was, at the time, almost exclusively young gay men with this devastating, mysterious and deadly disease, which we ultimately, a year or so later, gave the name of AIDS to.
On the trauma of caring for patients with AIDS in the early years of the epidemic
All of a sudden I was taking care of people who were desperately ill, mostly young gay men who I had a great deal of empathy for. And what we were doing was metaphorically like putting Band-Aids on hemorrhages, because we didn't know what the etiology was until three years later. We had no therapy until several, several years later. And although we were trained to be healers in medicine, we were healing no one and virtually all of our patients were dying.
Many of my colleagues who were really in the trenches back then, before we had therapy, really have some degree of post-traumatic stress. I describe in the memoir some very, very devastating experiences that you have with patients that you become attached to who you try your very, very best to help them. ... It was a very painful experience.
On working with President George W. Bush on the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which aimed to combat the global HIV/AIDS crisis
The president, to his great credit, called me into the Oval Office and said we have a moral obligation to not allow people to die of a preventable and treatable disease merely because of the fact [of] where they were born, in a poor country, and that was at a time when we had now developed drugs that were absolutely saving the lives of persons with HIV, having them go on to essentially a normal lifespan here in the United States, in the developed world. So he sent me to Africa to try and figure out the feasibility and accountability and the possibility of getting a program that could prevent and treat and care for people with HIV. And I worked for months and months on it after coming back from Africa, because I was convinced it could be done, because I felt very strongly that this disparity of accessibility of drugs between the developed and developing world was just unconscionable. Luckily, the president of the United States, in the form of George W. Bush, felt that way. And we put together the PEPFAR program. ... We spent $100 billion in 50 countries and it has saved 25 million lives, which I think is an amazing example of what presidential leadership can do.
On personally treating two patients with Ebola during the 2014 outbreak
The fundamental reason why I wanted to be directly involved in taking care of the two Ebola patients that came to the NIH is that if you look at what was going on in West Africa at the time and this was during the West African outbreak of Ebola is that health care providers were the ones at high risk of getting infected, and hundreds of them had already died in the field taking care of people in Africa physicians, nurses and other health-care providers. So even though we had very good conditions here, in the intensive care setting, of wearing these spacesuits that would protect you, these highly specialized personal protective equipment, I felt that if I was going to ask my staff to put themselves at risk in taking care of people ... I wanted to do it myself. I just felt I had to do that.
We took care of one patient who was mildly ill, who we did well with. But then the second patient was desperately ill. We did have contact with him, and we did get these virus-containing bodily fluids everything from urine to feces to blood to respiratory secretions we got it all over our personal protective equipment. And that was one of the reasons why you had to very meticulously take off your personal protective equipment so as not to get any of this virus on any part of your body. So the protocols for taking care of persons with Ebola in that intensive care setting were very, very strict protocols, which we adhered to very, very carefully. But it was a very tense experience, trying to save someone's life who was desperately ill at the same time as making sure that you and your colleagues don't get infected in the process.
Sam Briger and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
