And policies that leave farmworkers behind are putting Michiganders and the whole country at risk.
There is evidence that bird flu is already spreading from person to person. A patient in Mexico City, who had not been in direct contact with farm animals, recently died after contracting bird flu while hospitalized for other conditions. Though health authorities believe he died from co-morbidities, his death suggests that, like COVID-19, bird flu may be spreading in the general population and that people with chronic health problems may be at increased risk for death.
In light of this news, Michigan should protect farmworkers in order to prevent a wider bird flu outbreak. We can do this by using the proven strategies of providing testing, personal protective equipment (PPE), medical care, and paid sick leave to workers who handle livestock and poultry.
Farmworkers are on the frontlines of the bird flu outbreak. Protecting farmworkers would limit the initial point of contact and transmissibility. It isnt just the right thing to do; its a smart strategy to prevent another pandemic.
Though state and federal law require farm owners to provide PPE like masks, gloves, face shields, and goggles farmworkers across the state have told advocacy groups that theyre not receiving any. Recognizing the danger that lack of PPE poses, groups like the United Farm Workers Foundation have urged the Michigan Farm Bureau to take the issue seriously.
While viruses dont discriminate, our responses to viral outbreaks certainly can, and neglecting farmworkers now will only serve to exacerbate disease spread.
Michigan has been praised for monitoring the spread of bird flu and for texting and calling farmworkers in affected counties to encourage them to monitor for flu-like symptoms. The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development also issued a statement that they are offering assistance to dairy farms in need of protective equipment, but they failed to explain how farms can get assistance or what workers should do if theyre working on a farm that isnt providing PPE. Most importantly, these efforts fail to address the broader concerns that make farmworkers medically vulnerable.
Migrant farmworkers and undocumented immigrants who are overrepresented in the agricultural sector rarely have access to stable health care or paid sick leave. They often live in cramped housing, making it hard to isolate if theyre sick. Those who live on the farms where they work often lack transportation. And because they fear job loss and retaliation that could result in deportation, they may be reluctant to report bird flu symptoms or avoid getting medical care, even when its desperately needed.
Though Michigan is missing the mark on bird flu, its not too late to change course. We can take lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, politicians and pundits extolled essential workers. Estimates suggest that more than two-thirds of all undocumented immigrants worked in essential jobs during the pandemic.
But while the rhetoric was uplifting, public health experts cautioned that essential workers were more likely to contract COVID, spread the virus to others, and to die themselves. These predictions, sadly, came true.
We have a chance to do things differently now. In the face of this new virus, the sooner we act to protect vulnerable agricultural workers, the safer and healthier we all will be. Michigans leaders should waste no more time and act now to protect farmworkers, and all of us, from this new threat.
ATLANTA To offer cross-protection against diverse influenza virus variants, nanoparticle vaccines can produce pivotal cellular and mucosal immune responses that enhance vaccine efficacy and broaden protection, according to a study by researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, offers valuable insights into tailoring immunization strategies to optimize influenza vaccine effectiveness. To alleviate the significant public health burden of influenza epidemics and occasional pandemics, it's essential to enhance influenza vaccine cross-protection, according to the authors.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends annual influenza vaccination, current seasonal influenza vaccines typically provide strain-specific and short-lived immunity. Seasonal influenza vaccines offer limited cross-protection against antigenically diverse virus variants and provide no defense against sporadic influenza pandemics, the authors explained.
"Developing effective influenza vaccines or vaccination strategies that can confer cross-protection against variant influenza viruses is a high priority to mitigate the public health consequences of influenza," said Dr. Chunhong Dong, first author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State.
In the study, the researchers investigated the effects of immunization strategies on the generation of cross-protective immune responses in female mice using mRNA lipid nanoparticle (LNP) and protein-based polyethyleneimine-HA/CpG (PHC) nanoparticle vaccines targeting influenza hemagglutinin. The mice were immunized with either intramuscular mRNA LNP or intranasal PHC vaccines in a typical prime-plus-boost regimen. A variety of sequential immunization strategies were included in this study for parallel comparison.
"We demonstrated that cellular and mucosal immune responses are pivotal correlates of cross-protection against influenza," said Dr. Baozhong Wang, senior author of the study and a Distinguished University Professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State. "Notably, intranasal PHC immunization outperforms its intramuscular counterpart in inducing mucosal immunity and conferring cross-protection. Sequential mRNA LNP prime and intranasal PHC boost demonstrated optimal cross-protection against antigenically drifted and shifted influenza strains."
The study highlights the importance of immunization orders and indicates that in a sequential immunization, an mRNA vaccine priming plays an important role in steering the Th1/Th2 immune responses. Also, the intranasal PHC boost is crucial to the induction of mucosal immunity, Wang said.
Additional authors of the study include Wandi Zhu, Lai Wei, Joo Kyung Kim, Yao Ma and Sang-Moo Kang of the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State.
The study is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
To read the study, visit https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50087-5.
Eleven people in Connecticut are infected with the mpox virus, which is more than double the number of infections in 2023, according to state health officials.
Dr. Manisha Juthani, commissioner at state Department of Public Health, urged those at risk to get vaccinated.
This has largely been circulating among people who have sex with men, she said. One in three people who the CDC estimates to be at risk for mpox in Connecticut has received both vaccines. In order to be fully vaccinated against mpox, you need to receive two vaccine doses. We have plenty of vaccines. If you received only one vaccine, please come back and get a second and if you have not been vaccinated at all, take this opportunity, because we do know that mpox is circulating in Connecticut.
In 2022, state health officials reported 145 people were infected with the virus. Juthani said vaccinations brought that down to four last year.
The virus can spread through intimate contact, contaminated objects and respiratory droplets, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
As of July 8, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assessed the overall risk to the U.S. posed by the clade I mpox outbreak to the general population to be very low, and the risk to gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, who have more than one sexual partner, and people who have sex with men who have sex with men, regardless of gender, to be low to moderate.
Mpox is previously known as monkeypox. The Central and West Africa-originating zoonotic disease got a name change when WHO deemed the term as racist and stigmatizing.
State health experts say mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is popping up again.
They say 11 cases have been reported this year in Connecticut, compared to last year when there were only four.
In 2022, there was an outbreak with 145 cases.
"When we look at data across the United States, there are people who have received one dose and then had an active infection with mpox, said Dr. Manisha Juthani, the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health.
A study published Monday provides new evidence that the H5N1 virus currently causing an outbreak of bird flu in U.S. dairy cattle may be adapted to better infecting humans than other circulating strains of the virus, a result that is already courting controversy among the worlds leading flu researchers.
Across the globe, different influenza viruses are constantly circulating in many different kinds of animals. One of the things that determines what kind of animal a given flu virus can infect is the type of receptors present on the outside of tissues that virus comes in contact with. Flu viruses that typically infect birds have an affinity for latching on to the particular shape of a receptor commonly found in the guts of avian species. Human influenza viruses, on the other hand, prefer the shape of a receptor that lines our upper respiratory tracts.
The new work, published in Nature, showed that the bovine H5N1 virus could bind to both receptors.
There is an ability to bind to human-type receptors, the studys lead author, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, told STAT in an interview. But he cautioned that its too soon to say whether this ability means the recently emerged bovine branch of the H5N1 evolutionary tree has increased potential to become a significant human pathogen. Binding to human-type receptors is not the only factor that is required for an avian flu virus to replicate well in humans, said Kawaoka, a leading influenza virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied H5N1 for decades.
The work on predicted binding offers new evidence for wider attachment, including to cells lining the human upper respiratory tract but requires further study to understand the underlying factors, Ian Brown, the former virology head at the U.K.s Animal and Plant Health Agency who is now a group leader at the Pirbright Institute, said in a statement to reporters. Overall the study findings are not unexpected but this report provides further science insight to an evolving situation, that emphasizes the need for strong monitoring and surveillance in affected or exposed populations, both animals and humans to track future risk.
The result is sure to stoke fears that the H5N1 virus now circulating in dairy cows has already adapted toward spreading more efficiently in humans. But complicating this picture is the fact that other scientists, who have examined these same molecules that the bovine H5N1 virus uses to infect cells, have gotten different results.
James Paulson, the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Chair of Chemistry in the Department of Molecular Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute, told STAT via email that his lab, in collaboration with two different research groups, has found no suggestion that there is increased human type specificity in the H5N1 virus now expanding across U.S. dairy herds.
Scott Hensley, a professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, whose group is one of the ones working with Paulson, said in an email that their data suggest the bovine H5 molecule binds poorly to human receptors. It will be important for us to determine why we are seeing different results, he said.
Kawaoka acknowledged the conflicting data which are not yet published and attributed the disagreement to differences in experimental design. His own team used a method that involves coating plastic plates with microscopic forests of synthetic versions of the different receptor subunits, mixing them with H5N1 virus, and then measuring how much virus sticks.
Its the same method his group used more than a decade ago, to show that an H5N1 virus his lab had successfully (and controversially) altered to be transmittable through the air among ferrets had gained the ability to bind to human-type receptors. So theres an association of this ferret transmissibility and binding to the molecule that were using, Kawaoka said.
The other groups used not just the sub-units, but the whole receptor molecule that naturally exists on human cells.
Ron Fouchier, a flu virologist at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands who was not involved in either study, told STAT via email that the UW-Madison teams method is easy to perform and interpret, but that there are other available methods that would result in a clearer picture of binding specificity.
The dual receptor binding is interesting, but I do not find these [results] very unsettling, Fouchier wrote. This is an interesting initial observation that requires more work. In particular, hed like to see analyses that probe which mutations are driving the viruss ability to bind to different receptors.
Other components of the study added to existing evidence that the H5N1 virus is not very good at infecting mammals through the respiratory route, but that it has an affinity for mammary tissue and can transmit efficiently through contaminated milk.
Previously, a team led by Kawaoka had shown that female lab mice that were fed milk from H5N1-infected cows became very ill, and that the virus spread throughout their bodies, including into their mammary tissue, teats, and brains. In this latest research, the scientists repeated those experiments with smaller doses of infected milk, confirming that mice are susceptible to infection from consuming even tiny amounts less than a single drop of milk.
They also showed for the first time that vertical transmission is possible; female mice infected with the virus could pass it on to their pups through their own milk.
Another aspect of the study involved intranasally infecting ferrets, which is commonly used to study transmission through the air of respiratory viruses. The experimentally infected animals fell ill with fever and lost weight, but they did not efficiently spread the virus to other ferrets housed in cages close by. None of the four exposed animals developed clinical signs of disease or produced detectable levels of virus in their nasal passages, although one did develop some influenza antibodies suggesting there is some potential of spreading between ferrets via the respiratory route, but that it does not happen easily.
These data are consistent with another study conducted by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May. It found that an H5N1 virus isolated from the first human case tied to the dairy cow outbreak a farmworker in Texas spread easily between ferrets sharing the same cage, but not between cages where the animals shared air but had no direct contact. In that situation, only one out of three exposed animals became infected.
Its not zero transmission; there is some transmission but its very limited, Kawaoka said. That should provide some reassurance that the virus has not yet acquired the ability to easily spread through the air. But how long that will stay true, with the virus expanding its footprint and with it, opportunities to adapt to human biology is anybodys guess.
Continued surveillance is needed, Kawaoka said. We need to be concerned.
Helen Branswell contributed reporting.
By Thomas Moore, Science correspondent @SkyNewsThomas
Monday 8 July 2024 16:04, UK
The cow flu virus that has spread through US dairy herds may have taken a "dangerous" step towards being able to infect humans through respiratory infections, scientists have warned.
The H5N1 virus, more commonly found in birds, has so far been confirmed in cattle on more than 100 farms in 12 states, with inactivated fragments of the strain being found in pasteurised milk on supermarket shelves.
Four people working with animals have so far been infected, though symptoms were mild and they did not pass the virus on to anyone else.
Now detailed analysis by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US shows viral samples taken from cows were able to attach to receptors found on cells in the human respiratory tract.
The version of H5N1 found in birds is unable to do that, suggesting the bovine virus has mutated.
Further tests on ferrets, which are commonly used in flu research, found the cow virus could not spread easily by breathing.
However, Dr Ed Hutchinson, from the Medical Research Council and University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, said there were still "reasons to be concerned".
'Urgent' action needed
"When they compared their cow flu isolate to bird flu they found that it had already begun to gain some of the properties that would be associated with the ability to spread effectively through respiratory infections in humans," Dr Hutchinson, who was not involved in the study, said.
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"To be clear, it does not appear to be doing this yet, and none of the four human cases so far reported have shown signs of onward transmission.
"However, this new H5N1 influenza virus would be even harder to control, and even more dangerous to humans, if it gained the ability for effective respiratory spread.
"Although it is good news that cow flu cannot yet do this, these findings reinforce the need for urgent and determined action to closely monitor this outbreak and to try and bring it under control as soon as possible."
Unlike normal human flu, which is contained within the respiratory tract, H5N1 is able to spread to other organs in the body, with as-yet unknown effects.
The US government recently gave COVID vaccine manufacturer Moderna 139m to develop an H5N1 jab.
Read more from Sky News: First confirmed human case of bird flu dies Asteroid to pass 'relatively close' to Earth 'Super moss' discovered that could help sustain life on Mars
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The company's mRNA technology can be easily tweaked to match evolving viruses and then rapidly rolled out if there is an outbreak in humans.
The World Health Organisation says the current risk to people is low.
But scientists were astonished by the sudden appearance of the virus in cattle, a species not previously recognised as at risk, adding to fears that it could in future cause a human pandemic.
The research is published in the scientific journal Nature.
The discovery of bird flu in dairy cow milk highlighted a previously overlooked target for the H5N1 virus: mammary glands. A new study suggests its not unique to cows.
An H5N1 virus isolated from an infected cow spread to the mammary glands of mice and some ferrets common stand-ins to study flu infections in mammals exposed to the virus directly in their noses, virologist Amie Eisfeld of the University of WisconsinMadison and colleagues report July 8 in Nature. A bird flu virus taken from an infected person in 2004 also made it to the mouse and ferret mammary glands. But additional experiments show that the virus isnt very effective at spreading through the air.
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These typically respiratory viruses are already known to infect a wide variety of other body tissues such as the brain (SN: 5/31/24). There had been previous hints that the virus could invade mammary tissue. A long-forgotten study from 1953 had shown that a different strain of bird flu could infect cow mammary glands. A separate study found that the 2009 pandemic virus could infect the tissue in ferrets.
The new study finds that the H5N1 virus currently circulating in U.S. cows also charts a path to mammary glands, suggesting that the tissue unique to mammals is a more common target for the virus than originally thought.
An ongoing H5N1 outbreak in U.S. cows has affected more than 135 dairy herds in 12 states. Some infected cattle have no symptoms, while others can develop a fever or tiredness, and their appetite and milk production may drop.
The virus has been detected in cow milk (SN: 4/25/24). The surface of cows mammary cells is covered in a ducklike protein that the bird flu virus can exploit to gain entry, researchers report in the July Emerging Infectious Diseases. Such infections might explain how the virus is spreading among cattle. Its possible that contaminated milking equipment could carry virus from one cows udders to another, a separate group of researchers reported in the August Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Bird flu has also been detected in cows respiratory tracts. Yet despite lots of virus in that part of the body, there so far doesnt seem to be much respiratory transmission, says virologist Richard Webby of St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. It seems that cows arent a really good host for this virus unless you go directly to the udder.
In the new study, Eisfeld and colleagues exposed mice and ferrets to a variant of H5N1 taken from a cow in New Mexico to test whether the virus caused similar symptoms as in cows, and to better understand how the virus transmits.
In mice and ferrets, the virus spread to the lungs, as well as throughout the body to organs including the brain, intestines, kidney and heart. The virus also spread to the mammary glands of mice and some ferrets.
Infected female mice could transmit the virus to pups feeding on milk, but no transmission occurred through direct contact, the team found. Just one of four ferrets exposed to infected animals in a neighboring cage showed signs of infection, suggesting that the virus circulating among cows still isnt very good at spreading through the air.
So what do these findings mean for people? The overall risk remains low, public health officials say. But farm workers in direct contact with animals have a higher risk for acquiring bird flu from cows than the public does. So far, four people in the United States have developed mild cases after working with infected animals. Anyone who consumes dairy is advised to avoid raw milk. But the milk on grocery store shelves remains safe to consume: On June 28, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported that a widely used pasteurization process effectively kills all H5N1 virus in milk.
One thing researchers are keeping a close eye on, though, is whether the virus is adapting in ways that could raise the risk of spread. Cows cells have entry portals for human flus as well as bird flus, which could make the animals mixing vessels that allow bird and human viruses to swap genes (SN: 5/14/24). That could create new versions of influenza that might better infect people.
Governor Jared Polis has declared a disaster emergency after an outbreak of avian flu was detected at a large commercial egg operation in Weld County last Friday, freeing up state resources to help agriculture officials and farmers respond to the situation.
Federal avian flu protocol dictates that all birds in a flock have to be humanely put down if a single case of the highly contagious virus is detected among it. In this particular outbreak, all 1.78 million chickens at the Weld County farm will have to be killed to prevent any further spread.
The Weld County outbreak is the first at a commercial facility in Colorado since February and only the second since December 2022. Avian flu detections among commercial and backyard poultry flocks have been relatively low in recent years, due in part to farmers following strict biosecurity measures.
The latest outbreak comes as national concerns around the avian flu reach new heights. In spring, federal officials began detecting the presence of avian flu within domestic cattle herds across the nation. Currently, Colorado is reporting more cases among dairy cows than any other state, according to federal data. Unlike birds, however, cattle typically survive infection after a period of symptoms and producers are not required to destroy infected animals.
Avian flus jump from birds to cattle has health officials concerned about how the virus could continue to mutate and spread. The virus has already shown it has the capacity to spread to humans. Last week, the state health department said an employee of a dairy farm contracted avian flu from animals on site.
The infected man showed mild symptoms and was prescribed an antiviral treatment. Federal and state officials maintain that the risk to humans is still low, and that pasteurized milk products and beef are safe to consume. Those who come into close contact with cattle and birds are encouraged to take several precautions, including wearing personal protective gear when around animals.
The strain of bird flu virus detected in U.S. dairy cows this spring may be transmissible to mammals, the National Institutes of Health reported Monday. The agency found that highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza viruses in infected U.S. dairy cattle induced severe disease in mice and ferrets when administered intranasally but did not transmit easily between animals or people through sneezing or coughing.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, also known as bird or avian flu, can be transmitted by wild birds to domestic poultry and other bird and animal species, according to the Food and Drug Administration. It rarely infects humans, though sporadic infections in people have occurred.
The news about H5N1s transmissibility comes about a week after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a fourth human case of bird flu in a dairy worker in Colorado. The infected individual had only experienced eye symptoms and recovered after receiving oseltamivir treatment. The Colorado bird flu infection followed previous cases reported in Texas and Michigan.
In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it had found the H5N1 virus in livestock in several states, including Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico and Texas. The virus caused fatal infections in some cats on farms and also infected poultry, according to the NIH.
Following the H5N1 virus outbreak, researchers with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab and Japans Tokyo and Shizuoka Universities looked at whether H5N1 in cows caused disease in mice and ferrets. Ferrets are often used in influenza A virus studies because they are similar to humans in their immune responses and respiratory tract infections.
The ferrets in the study were intranasally infected with the bovine strain of H5N1 virus, after which they experienced body weight loss and elevated temperatures. Virus levels were especially high in the ferrets upper and lower respiratory tracts.
The researchers found that ferrets infected with H5N1 did not, however, efficiently transmit the virus through coughing or sneezing.
Since the H5N1 outbreak in dairy cows, the CDC has deemed the health risk for the general public to be low, though individuals who work in close proximity to infected birds and livestock are at greater infection risk.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said last week it is giving $176 million to the pharmaceutical company Moderna to speed up development of a pandemic flu vaccine. The funds will be used to support development of an mRNA-based vaccine for H5 bird influenza.
FILE - In this Oct. 21, 2015, file photo, cage-free chickens walk in a fenced pasture at an organic farm near Waukon, Iowa. Some farmers are wondering if it's OK that eggs sold as free-range come from chickens being kept inside. It's a question that arises lately as farmers try to be open about their product while also protecting chickens from a highly infectious bird flu that has killed roughly 28 million poultry across the country. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
DENVER (KDVR) Gov. Jared Polis declared a disaster emergency on July 5 after an outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu was reported at a facility in Weld County.
The declaration is for a commercial poultry facility and is intended to ensure the state government can provide resources and support for Colorados agriculture industry. The size of the facility, when the outbreak began and how the state will assist in this effort is unclear. FOX31 has reached out to state officials for more information.
Polis verbal declaration activates the State Emergency Operations Plan, directing the Office of Emergency Management to take all necessary and appropriate State actions to assist with response, recovery, and mitigation efforts. The state said that specifically, this will help provide Weld County avian producers the necessary resources to respond to and contain the outbreak of avian flu.
The state has been focusing on avian flu in dairy cattle, asking livestock exhibitors to take extra steps to keep themselves and their animals safe during county fair season. Highly pathogenic avian influenza was first positively identified in Colorado dairy cattle on April 25, and has led to 10 facilities being placed on quarantine.
The bird-borne virus can be transmitted to cattle and humans but has also been found in other mammals. According to the World Health Organization, symptoms of the virus are primarily respiratory, but the most recent human case involved conjunctivitis (pink eye).
The Weld County disaster declaration also comes only five days after the state announced the first human case of bird flu for the year. That worker was employed at a dairy farm in northeast Colorado with direct exposure to dairy cattle infected with avian flu.
Northeast Colorado is also where the first case of highly pathogenicavian influenza was detected on April 25.
The Centers for Disease Control and the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment recommend that to prevent getting sick with H5N1, individuals should:
According to the CDC, around 40 birds were found to have H5N1 at a Morgan County facility on June 27. Another facility in Larimer County was found to have 10 affected birds on June 26. Before that, the most recent detection of H5N1 in flocks was found on Feb. 8 in Delta County.
