Milk testing is vital to keeping avian flu out of state's dairy herds

While New York state has not had a case of avian influenza in dairy cows, veterinary experts say milk testing underway at dairy processing plants is the key to early detection. According to Friday numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no person-to-person spread of avian flu H5N1 virus has occurred, however 70 people in the US have become infected from live poultry, cattle, or milk directly from the milking process with one known death.
With dairy farms expanding into larger numbers of cows, Kaitlyn Lutz, VMD, bilingual dairy specialist for Cornell Cooperative Northwest Dairy Livestock and Field Crops Team, said milk testing is able to keep pace. She said pasteurizing milk with heat at processing plants has been demonstrated to kill the H5N1 virus before milk is sold for human consumption.
'It's actually kind of a wimpy virus when it comes to heat treatment,' said Michael Capel, DVM, DABVP, a bovine veterinarian and partner in Perry Veterinary Clinic in Wyoming County. 'Pasteurization is 100% effective.'
While dabbling ducks like mallards introduced avian flu to cows, the virus has changed to a new strain that moves within cattle, and occasionally to people. Eliminating contact between cows and birds is not a prevention priority.
'The original spillover event was from wild birds to dairy cattle, but now that it's been in cattle, it's thought that it is spread from other infected cattle or fomites (secretions),' Lutz said. 'Milk has the highest viral load compared to any other body secretion.'
People who drink unprocessed milk should be vigilant, Lutz said.
'We do have raw milk consumption in our state,' she said. 'There are multiple farms that have raw milk permits. We do not know if raw milk is safe to drink for humans.'
Farm workers who are exposed to unpasteurized milk in the milking process have some risk of contracting avian flu, Lutz said. She works to educate workers in Western New York about the illness and its prevention.
Routine testing at New York's regional dairy processing plants has not detected avian influenza, but if a milk sample tested positive it could be immediately linked to the farm where it originated, said Capel, past president of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners. That's because processors are required to test milk from incoming trucks, and they store a sample from each farm,' Capel said.
Nearly every state in the country has implemented the National Milk Testing Strategy which assures that milk is screened for the live H5N1 virus by farm or processor level, he said.
Milk testing is key because there is no vaccine licensed in the United States to prevent avian flu in cattle, Capel said.
Other avian flu precautions are taken when shipping cattle. Lutz said many dairy farms outsource the rearing of heifer calves to facilities in western states. Once grown, the heifers are returned to the farm of origin.
"Because we have transport of young stock across state lines, it's something we have to be mindful of," Lutz said.
New York requires young animals coming from out-of-state to receive a nasal swab test, Capel said, but flu risk among heifers is much smaller than among lactating cattle.
Capel advises farmers to ask for milk testing results on any individual cows they are considering purchasing.
'If I were purchasing from a farm, I would go to the farm and ask for milk testing for a couple of weeks.'
He said any new animals should be kept separately from the herd and monitored.
David McCollum, co-owner of McCollum Farms in Gasport with 1,500 dairy cows, joked that you can't post a sign - Avian flu keep out.
'All you can do is keep things tightened up,' he said.
Infected cows recover with treatment, Capel said, but often do not resume full milk production. If they are culled, they can not be sold for human consumption.
Capel's veterinary practice works with dairy farms on biosecurity plans to address avian flu and other disease risks.
'I think these individual plans are really critical,' he said. 'Every farm is a little bit different, and risk factors on farms are a little bit different.' Grant funding has been available from the USDA to cover veterinarians' consulting time, equipment, and protective gear.

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Scientific American

3 hours ago

• Scientific American

How Bird Flu Became a Human Pandemic Threat

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. H5N1 bird flu has been making a lot of headlines since last year, and for good reason: since March 2024 this subtype of bird flu has infected upwards of 1,000 herds of dairy cattle, raising concerns about the virus's ability to pass between mammals. This week Science Quickly is doing a three-part deep dive to bring you the latest research on bird flu. From visiting dairy farms to touring cutting-edge virology labs we'll explore what scientists have learned about bird flu—and why it poses such a potential risk to humans. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Today's episode brings us back to the start: the wild flocks where new strains of bird flu evolve and spread. Our host is Lauren Young, associate editor for health and medicine at Scientific American. [CLIP: Birds cawing.] Pamela McKenzie: So many red knots—it's unbelievable. Lauren Young: Out on Norbury's Landing, a small strip of sandy beach at the southern tip of New Jersey on the Delaware Bay, Pamela McKenzie peers through her binoculars at a massive flock of shorebirds. McKenzie: It's just, like, a sea of red bellies. Young: A flurry of different migratory birds, including red knots, ruddy turnstones and sanderlings, are making a pit stop on their long migration up to the Arctic Circle. The birds are just in sight, and Pam desperately wants to get closer without disturbing them. But there's a problem: the high tide has filled a small channel that's blocking our path. Young (tape): Wow, there's, like, tons of them over there. That's wild. McKenzie: Of course, right where we need to go. Young: So most people go to the beach for the cool waves, the salty breeze and the sunshine. Some might go to collect seashells. But Pam is out here collecting bird poop. Every year in mid-May she hops between the various beaches of Delaware Bay, scooping poop that just might contain avian influenza viruses. By the second day of this year's collection her team had already found samples that came back positive for different bird flu viruses, but not the headline-making H5N1—at least not yet. McKenzie: What's unique about Delaware Bay is that it's a hotspot for influenza. Every year these birds migrate here, and we find influenza—and different influenza—every year. Young: Pam is a virus detective. As director of surveillance for the St. Jude Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response she and her fellow research scientists take an annual visit to Delaware Bay. They do this to stay on top of the avian influenza viruses actively circulating in the flocks of migrating shorebirds. Robert Webster: One of the very important contributions that the laboratory here at St. Jude has made was the realization that influenza in aquatic birds replicates mainly in the intestinal tract and the birds poop it out. Young: That's Robert Webster. He first visited Delaware Bay in 1985. Robert began St. Jude's influenza surveillance research at the bay, which has continued for the last 40 years. Webster: Vast quantities of virus [were] in the feces. And so going back to Delaware Bay we didn't have to catch the birds; we simply followed them and took fecal samples from the beach when they pooped. Young: The reason the shorebirds are here, pooping out a lot of influenza, has to do with the full moon—the first full moon in May, to be exact. The moon's gravitational pull causes the high tides to swell, drawing in thousands of horseshoe crabs, tussling in huge mating piles along the waterline. And the birds know this is the start of the crabs' mating season. [CLIP: Waves crash on the beach, and birds caw.] Young: Standing on the shore of Norbury's Landing on a blustery mid-May afternoon, I watched this scene unfold. Young (tape): So that one is attached and mating. McKenzie: Yeah, so if she was over here laying eggs, it would be trying to fertilize the eggs, and—like right here: see how its claws are attached to her? Young: The heavily armored crabs look a bit alien, and sometimes a bit silly, as they draw odd tracks in the sand like uncoordinated Roombas. The ancient arthropods burrow into the sand and lay millions of gelatinous eggs. Those eggs provide the perfect buffet for the migrating birds that need to bulk up before their next leg in their journey. McKenzie: They're pretty thin though, so they'll be around for a while. They're not nice and fat. Young: And Pam needs the birds to eat because she needs them to poop. As time passes and the tide retreats, first the birds swoop in to feast, and then Pam comes in, hot on their trail of droppings. After 15 years of doing this work Pam has developed a special eye for bird poop. She can make a pretty good first guess of what poop belongs to the migratory bird she's most interested in. McKenzie: Here's one. That's one. It's probably a sanderling, like, small—you know, it's small, so probably a small bird. So this right here, this is so crass [laughs], but it's like a little log, and ruddy turnstones tend to drop logs, so. Young: Fresh poop is best—damp but not drenched from the tide. This increases the odds it'll contain live virus that can be sequenced back at the lab. Once Pam spots a promising, intact poo she'll use a swab to swiftly scoop the sample from the sand and into a vial. St. Jude's research center holds a library of more than 20,000 viruses, including isolates of various iterations, or subtypes, of avian influenza collected from Delaware Bay and other locations around the world. Influenza subtypes are generally classified based on two specific surface proteins: hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. They represent the H and the N in flu names you've probably seen, like the common seasonal flu subtypes H1N1 and H3N2. There are 144 H and N possible combinations of avian influenza. And over the years the St. Jude team has detected nearly every subtype in fecal samples collected at Delaware Bay. That includes the subtype that's been on our minds a lot lately. Webster: Amongst those was H5N1, indeed, but not from the European or Chinese ones. Young: The particular shorebirds stopping by Delaware Bay might not be carrying the kind of bird flu that could be dangerous to domestic animals or humans. But with the right genetic mixing we could potentially see outbreaks of a new 'killer' strain like the one currently ripping through U.S. farms. Since 2022 a deadly new strain of H5N1 has infected more than 170 million domestic poultry, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The virus has raised our egg prices, led to the culling of millions of chickens and infected upwards of 1,000 herds of dairy cattle since March 2024. But to really understand the high-pathogenic H5N1 in our cows and chickens—and where it might go from here—we have to go back in time and look at wild birds. Young: Wild birds, particularly aquatic birds, are hosts, or reservoirs, of different influenza viruses. They're categorized as either low-pathogenic or highly pathogenic, depending on how well they cause disease in chickens. A highly pathogenic, or 'high-path,' virus, as many influenza researchers like to call it, can wipe out an entire poultry flock in just a few days. The earliest records of high-path avian influenza are believed to come from the late 1800s, when what was known at the time as 'fowl plague' ripped through poultry in Europe. Sporadic spillovers from wild to domestic birds have continued ever since. Keiji Fukuda: In the influenza field it was clear that there was a very large group of influenza viruses, which infected birds and sometimes infected animals, and then there was a much smaller group of human influenza viruses, which infected people. Young: That's Keiji Fukuda, a retired physician and influenza epidemiologist who worked for various institutions, including the University of Hong Kong, World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fukuda: We thought these were separate groups of viruses and that animal influenza viruses did not infect humans. Young: That changed in 1997, when a previously healthy three-year-old boy in Hong Kong was hospitalized and developed a severe pneumonia. Six days later the boy died. Influenza researchers around the world were called upon to help identify the exact type of virus. Robert was one of them. Webster: It couldn't be identified at CDC. It couldn't be identified in London or in Holland, where they sent it, and they applied to me for the whole range of influenza virus reference serum, and they identified this virus as an H5, an H5N1. And no one would quite believe that this virus had killed the child. Young: That shocked scientists and public health leaders, including molecular virologist Nancy Cox. She's retired now but worked at the CDC from 1975 to 2014 and was leading the agency's influenza branch in 1997. Nancy Cox: We didn't expect to see high-path avian influenza viruses infecting humans. We just didn't expect that. We hadn't seen it before. It was really quite out of left field. Young: Questions started flying rapid-fire. Fukuda: How could this boy have become infected? Cox: Where'd this virus come from? Could it have been a laboratory contaminant from eggs that had come in from an infected farm? Fukuda: Was this boy associated with any kind of unusual exposures? Cox: Were there other cases that had yet to be identified in Hong Kong? Young: Everyone hoped the child was a tragic one-off case. But a few months later their worst fears became a reality: more people developed H5N1 infections. Keiji, who was also with the CDC at the time and had worked with local public health officials on the ground on the first case, returned to Hong Kong. [CLIP: A reporter interviews Keiji Fukuda during a 1997 press conference: '[Is there a] possibility this virus could, could become stronger in, in terms of its efficiency?'] [CLIP: Fukuda responds to the reporter: 'Well, by stronger, you mean it could become more adapted to humans and sort of pass through? Yes, there is that possibility.'] Young: That was younger Keiji back in 1997, talking to a reporter at a press conference in Hong Kong as the outbreak was unfolding. Fukuda: We're dealing with a virus which has remained persistent for at least some period of time, and we have no idea: 'Is this the beginning of another pandemic?' And the investigations took on a whole different flavor. It was very serious. Young: Keiji says the team eventually determined that the virus seemingly spread through traditional live bird markets, often referred to as wet markets. As is the case in many Asian cultures it is common for people in Hong Kong to purchase fresh poultry, including chicken, duck and goose, that is often killed on-site. Guided by public health advisers, government officials ordered that the markets suspend sales and get cleaned—and that farms and markets cull all poultry. Fukuda: At that time it was a very kind of disquieting decision and implementation. You know, we had never before recommended the culling of such a large number of birds. Young: Although it was a brutal decision for farmers and sellers the tactic worked, effectively squashing an outbreak that seemed on the verge of taking off. By the end of the outbreak six people had died of the 18 with confirmed infections. Thankfully there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, which is key to kick-starting a pandemic. The genetic sequences of the virus also revealed genes tracing back to its likely reservoir: waterfowl, or geese. Here's Nancy. Cox: What we saw at the very beginning of the H5N1 outbreak back in 1997 is that the viruses that we identified from poultry and from people were really very, very similar. Young: But she says a lot has happened since the 1997 Hong Kong outbreak. Cox: Now we've had this virus circulating globally, and what we're seeing is a huge amount of diversity, and what does that mean? It means that we have a lot more opportunities for the virus to develop the ability to infect humans more efficiently and then eventually, potentially, to become transmissible from human to human. Young: As H5N1 has fanned across the globe over the years its activity has been a bit like a simmering volcano: occasionally waking up in dramatic spurts, only to go quiet again. And each time it flares up the virus gets a new opportunity to tweak itself—ever so slightly. Wendy Puryear: During that whole 30-year time period there continued to be ongoing evolution and shifts and changes in the virus. Young: Wendy Puryear is a scientist studying influenza evolution and adaptation at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. Puryear: It's an RNA virus, and that means that it is sloppy in the way that it replicates, so there's constantly slight changes that are being introduced every time that virus goes through a replication cycle. Young: Wendy's research at Tufts focuses on the surveillance of different subtypes of influenza and wildlife. She's been watching with increasing unease how changes, or mutations, are creating a vast diversity of H5N1 viruses—including ones that might be better at infecting different animals. Puryear: Prior to the COVID pandemic the thing that many of us were very concerned would be the next pandemic of large impact on human health was influenza. So this is one that we've been worried about for a long time. Young: Wendy says H5N1 keeps hitting mutation milestones that are getting too close for comfort. Puryear: We keep going further down that road of 'at least it hasn't.' 'At least it hadn't gone into a lot of wild animals and was disseminating around the globe.' Young: Now lineages of the virus have been detected in animals in nearly every continent. H5N1 has established itself in domestic poultry in various countries in Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, Africa and Europe. And [starting] a few years ago the number of bird species carrying H5N1 has ballooned. More than 500 different avian species, ranging from seabirds to songbirds, have tested positive for H5N1, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Puryear: ' Well, now it is. Well, at least it wasn't going into mammals.' Young: Then around 2020 and 2021 highly pathogenic H5N1 started to infect different mammals, to date affecting more than 90 different species in total, including coyotes, minks, opossums, skunks and rodents. The virus had previously been found in the occasional fox or tiger, typically predators that might've eaten an infected wild bird. But the list of newly infected mammal species is growing in a way that hasn't been seen before. Pruyear: 'At least there wasn't evidence of mammal-to-mammal transmission.' Well, then we had that in marine mammals in South America. Young: In 2022 and 2023 the virus spread among various marine animals along the coast of Peru and Chile, killing more than 30,000 sea lions. It happened so rapidly that scientists suspected it must have traveled directly between animals. The virus made its way around to the Atlantic coast. Groups of dolphins, porpoises and otters were also infected. Puryear: 'Well, at least it's not in a context that we're in close proximity between humans and those mammals.' Well, now it's in dairy cattle. Young: No one expected the virus to hit U.S. dairy cows. How it got onto farms in the first place is still a bit of a mystery; you'll hear a lot more about that in the next episode of this three-part series. But it's important to say that scientists do have a strong hunch about how the virus made that jump—and you probably guessed it: wild birds. Louise Moncla: There's this whole diversity of low-path viruses that don't really cause as many problems that circulate endemically in these wild birds in North America. Young: That's Louise Moncla. She's a pathobiologist leading a lab at the University of Pennsylvania that's building a family tree of avian influenza viruses. Moncla: Through this process called reassortment this incurring kind of new virus that entered started mixing with those viruses, and so we now have this diverse mixture of viruses sort of circulating in wild birds, resulting in the emergence of these new genotypes ... Young: New genotypes, or unique genetic profiles, like the high-path H5N1 that scientists think started infecting dairy cows. This genetic mixing, or reassortment of different influenza viruses, occurs when they co-infect one host: a bird, an animal or, worse, a human. That opens up the window for genetic information to be exchanged. Here's Wendy again to unpack a bit of what Louise said. Puryear: Not only do you have this regular evolution that happens with the virus being sloppy in how it replicates, but the fact that it has its genome on separate pieces, its genetic information is actually—those genes are on separate chunks of, of RNA, and that means that it can take a whole gene and swap it out with a different form of influenza, so that gives a whole new kinda Frankenstein version of the virus that can then move forward. Young: And this process of virus info swapping can potentially spiral into something much bigger—and deadlier. Here's Louise again. Moncla: Reassortment is a really important process for influenza evolution because it has led to every past pandemic that we know about. So we usually get influenza pandemics when viruses from two different species mix via reassortment and [that] results in a virus for which a host population like humans doesn't have any prior immunity. Young: But those viral swap meets leave footprints—clues that help researchers like Wendy and Louise track influenza evolution through time and space. Louise's flu family tree models, for instance, allow for real-time tracking of noteworthy genetic changes in H5N1. The tree's branches show small shifts from the virus's sloppy reproduction and the big evolutionary leaps from reassortment. Moncla: If you sample and sequence those viral genomes, you can use those mutations to link cases together. So these genomes provide this nice little map of how this virus has been moving between different host species or populations or geographic areas. Young: And wild birds help paint a picture of where the virus might be now and where it might go next. These feathered virus carriers have effectively moved influenza around the world and into our domesticated animals. But Louise, Wendy, Nancy, Keiji and folks at St. Jude are all quick to say that migrating birds and wildlife shouldn't be blamed for H5N1's current stronghold—it's the way that humans monitor and respond to the situation. Moncla: Now that these viruses are really being driven by transmission of wild birds we need to understand how these viruses evolve in wild birds a lot better. And so something I'm really hoping continues to happen is surveillance in wild birds. You know, so without this kind of continuous surveillance effort in wild birds we wouldn't have been able to understand the outbreak in dairy cattle or these human spillovers and where they're coming from. Young: Wild birds can't be stopped, but they can be watched—just like how the St. Jude group is surveying the shorebirds at Delaware Bay, year after year. [CLIP: Birds caw.] Young: Back in Delaware Bay, armed with vials of bird poop and a compact scientific camper van, another virus hunter is doing exactly that. Lisa Kercher: My name is Lisa Kercher. I am the director of laboratory operations for the Webby Lab group at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which is a—our lab group is a large influenza research laboratory. Young (tape): Great, and tell us where we are right now. Kercher: Yes, we're sitting in a 19-foot toy hauler that is a trailer camper that has been built out to work as a molecular biology lab. Young: Lisa lives part time in her truck and camper, living and sleeping alongside carefully stored poop samples preserved in cold liquid nitrogen. The space is a cozy fit for the two of us and her sweet English Labrador retriever, Jax. Like a lot of campers it's got a small kitchen, bathroom and a very comfortable bed, according to Lisa, but she's customized the space with a makeshift lab bench. Kercher: I have like already shattered the door once and had to have it replaced. Young (tape): No...! Young: Her working area is stocked with protective gear, reagents, pipettes, well plates and a variety of miniature equipment, including a PCR machine that can quickly amplify DNA from samples Pam collected the day before. Kercher: It can then immediately run a PCR for flu and for H5, and I know on my little laptop here if that's positive within about an hour. And so by the time I'm driving home I have the prevalence of the flu that was in these shorebirds for the time I was here. So it's a great first step. Young: At that point in site collecting she had processed 250 fecal samples. By the end of the week the team will have collected 1,000. Later the samples will be transported to St. Jude's main labs in Tennessee to verify Lisa's initial readings. Before she started doing this real-time surveillance work two years ago, the team wouldn't know what avian influenza subtypes they had on their hands until about six months after the sample collections. Kercher: It's very hard to do epidemiology of how the virus is moving and tracking when you spend six months waiting for the sequence to come out of a national lab or any big lab. It's just hard logistically to then backtrack and figure that out. You can do it, but it's usually a year later. And then you are usually faced with a whole different virus by that time. So the point of doing it faster is so that you can do risk assessment in more real time. Young: But if Lisa wants to be really fast, she needs more data. The poo samples from the beach are valuable sources of viral sequences, but they can't offer the full flu picture. Kercher: So when you get a flu virus from a fecal sample you have to give it a name, you have to same say the species that it came from. How do you know? Young: Like solving any mystery the researchers want to answer the big whodunit—or in this case, who- dung -it. Knowing the exact bird species that pooed the poo requires more testing and more time, and it's not something that she can do from inside the camper lab. That's why Lisa is teaming up with local wildlife ecologists. Enter Larry Niles and his bird-catching cannon. Larry Niles: Most of those noises are from the sanderling. We caught almost 100 sanderlings. Young (tape): Wow. Niles: We caught a handful of [red] knots and ruddy turnstones. Young: The day before visiting the mobile lab I was on the beach with Lisa and Larry. He co-leads the Delaware Bay Shorebird Project with Wildlife Restoration Partnerships. Larry has been catching shorebirds here as part of his conservation work for the last 29 years. And yes, his group uses something called a cannon net to nab these birds because ... Niles: See, shorebirds very difficult to catch because they're hard to get close to because they're used to being out on flats like sand flats. Today we used two cannon, and see, the advantage of that is: the net, which is about 40 feet [roughly 12 meters] long, when we hook it up to the cannons, that net goes so fast that it gets over the birds before they have the time to react. Young: The birds are temporarily corralled in cloth-covered boxes, waiting for Larry and the other researchers and volunteers to gently pull them out to collect various data points. They'll measure the birds' wings and beaks, weigh them and take a blood and feather sample before they're released back to the horseshoe-crab-egg feast on the beach. And though Larry has his own research to do on the ecology of the birds—their health, their population numbers and what might threaten those things—he says it's a real bonus to have virus detectives like Pam and Lisa to work with, side by side. Niles: I'm not a virologist; I'm an ecologist. But I understand the ecology of things, and I think melding the ecology of birds with the ecology of these viruses, that's our part—working with the virologists so that together we could figure it out. Young: For Lisa, getting access to the shorebirds directly unlocks all sorts of crucial information. Kercher: So, when you're getting the samples straight from the birds then you already know the species, so that just makes it a little bit easier. Young: And it's along these migratory routes, called flyways, where the birds, the ecologists and the virologists with camper labs need to meet. Kercher: When the avian virus jumps into a mammal it has the opportunity to mutate into becoming more mammalianlike, and that is why we are so concerned in the flyway. Young: There are four main flyways, [also] called avian superhighways, that run through North America. Since getting her mobile lab up and running Lisa has driven it thousands of miles up and down these flyways to sites in Alberta, Canada, and northwest Tennessee. But these avian superhighways have also become increasingly concerning for H5N1. Kercher: Those birds are carrying this virus in greater numbers and in lots more areas where there's potential for spillover into domestic poultry farms. And of course, this happened in the dairy farms—it spilled over into the cattle, so this virus is now very prevalent all over North America. But the flyways are important because the birds that carry it are moving quickly down the flyway in a very short period of time, and you have a lot of opportunity for spillover there. Young: Lisa says that speed matters for a rapidly changing virus like H5N1. She could imagine her mobile lab getting scaled up into a large biosurveillance network: multiple satellite labs dotted up and down all the flyways, relaying genetic sequences to other influenza trackers like Louise and Wendy but also to farmers on the ground trying to keep their chickens and cows healthy. Kercher: Wouldn't it be great if the farmer had a way to go on his computer and look at a dashboard and say, 'Wow, I wonder where the flu is?' They need to know where it is circulating in the wild birds. And if they knew where it was ahead of time—or at least where it was coming from—they would have an opportunity, if they chose, to up their biosecurity a little bit. Young: Until then virus detectors like Pam and Lisa continue to keep a watchful eye on the surprising twists and turns of H5N1, looking to the birds and the clues they leave behind. Kercher: We'll never catch up with Mother Nature. We're never gonna catch up with the virus and how it mutates. But if we can get closer and approach it more, you can then look for mutations, much quicker things that make the virus resistant to antivirals or things that make it more mammalian adaptable. You would wanna know that sooner rather than later. Feltman: That's all for today's episode, but there's lots more to come. Tune in on Wednesday for part two of our special series on bird flu, which explores how avian influenza made its unprecedented leap into cattle. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was reported and hosted by Lauren Young and edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Special thanks to Michael Sheffield at St. Jude; the volunteers and collaborators with Wildlife Restoration Partnerships; and Kimberly Lau, Dean Visser and Jeanna Bryner at Scientific American. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American' s Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. See you next time!

Yahoo

8 hours ago

• Yahoo

Who are the eight new vaccine advisers appointed by Robert F Kennedy?

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, named eight new vaccine advisers this week to a critical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel after firing all 17 experts who had held the roles. New members of the panel include experts who complained about being sidelined, a high-profile figure who has spread misinformation and medical professionals who appear to have little vaccine expertise. Kennedy made the announcement on social media. 'All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,' Kennedy said in his announcement. 'They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.' Formally called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel advises the CDC on how vaccines should be distributed. Those recommendations in effect determine the vaccines Americans can access. This week, Kennedy also removed the career officials typically tasked with vetting ACIP members and overseeing the advisory group, according to CBS News. Related: RFK Jr announces new panel of vaccine advisers after firing entire previous team Kennedy is a widely known vaccine skeptic who profited from suing vaccine manufacturers, has taken increasingly dramatic steps to upend US vaccine policy. 'ACIP is widely regarded as the international gold standard for vaccine decision-making,' said Helen Chu, one of the fired advisers, at a press conference with Patty Murray, a Democratic US senator. 'We cannot replace it with a process driven by one person's beliefs. In the absence of an independent, unbiased ACIP, we can no longer trust that safe and effective vaccines will be available to us and the people around us.' Arguably the most high-profile new member, Robert W Malone catapulted to stardom during the Covid-19 pandemic, appearing across rightwing media to criticize the Biden administration while describing himself as the inventor of mRNA technology. Messenger RNA technology powers the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines. While Malone was involved in very early experiments on the technology, researchers have said his role was limited. Malone's star rose quickly after appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2022, where he and Rogan were criticized for spreading misinformation. On the show, Malone promoted the idea that both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine could be possible treatments for Covid-19, but said research on the drugs was being suppressed. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have not been shown to improve outcomes from Covid-19. 'Malone has a well-documented history of promoting conspiracy theories,' said Dr Jeffrey D Klausner, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the University of Southern California, who recently told the New York Times he was in touch with Kennedy about his appointments. Kulldorff is a former Harvard professor of biostatistics and an infectious disease epidemiologist originally from Sweden. He said in an essay for the rightwing publication City Journal that he was fired because he refused to be vaccinated in line with the school policy. Like Malone, he rose to prominence during the pandemic as a 'Covid contrarian' who criticized the scientific consensus – views he said alienated him from his peers in the scientific community. He voiced his opposition to Covid-19 vaccine mandates and, in his essay, complained of being ignored by media and shadow-banned from Twitter. Kulldorff co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for limited closures instead of pandemic lockdowns before vaccines were available. The document became a touchstone for the American political right. Before the pandemic, Kulldorff studied vaccine safety and infectious disease, including co-authoring papers with members of CDC staff, such as on the Vaccine Safety Datalink. He was a member of the CDC's Covid Vaccine Safety Working Group in 2020, but said later he was fired because he disagreed with the agency's decision to pause Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine and with Covid-19 vaccine mandates. He served on the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) drug safety and risk management advisory committee around the same time. He has since enjoyed support from people already within the administration, including the Great Barrington Declaration co-author Dr Jay Bhattacharya, current head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Dr Vinay Prasad, head of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which handles vaccines. Meissner is a professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He previously held advisory roles at the FDA and CDC, including ACIP from 2008-2012. In 2021, Meissner co-wrote an editorial with Dr Marty Makary, now the head of the FDA, which criticized mask mandates for children. In April, he was listed as an external adviser to ACIP on the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) committee. Notably, Meissner is listed in a new conflicts of interest tool launched by the health department in March. Kennedy had criticized the fired ACIP members as 'plagued with persistent conflicts of interest'. 'He's a card-carrying infectious disease person who knows the burden of these diseases, and he knows the risk and the benefit,' Dr Kathryn Edwards told CBS News. Edwards previously served as chair of the FDA's vaccine advisory panel. Pebsworth is a nurse and the former consumer representative on the FDA's vaccine advisory committee. She is also the Pacific regional director for the National Association of Catholic Nurses, according to Kennedy's announcement. In 2020, Pebsworth spoke at the public comment portion of an FDA advisory panel meeting on Covid-19 vaccines. There, she identified herself as the volunteer research director for the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), 'and the mother of a child injured by his 15-month well-baby shots in 1998'. The NVIC is widely viewed as an anti-vaccine advocacy organization 'whose founder Barbara Lou Fisher must be considered a key figure of the anti-vaccine movement', according to an article from 2023 on how to counter anti-vaccine misinformation. Levi is a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management who Kennedy described as an 'expert in healthcare analytics, risk management and vaccine safety'. In 2021, he opposed Covid-19 booster shot approval during the public comment portion of an FDA advisory committee hearing. In 2022, he wrote an article calling for EMS calls to be incorporated into vaccine safety data, arguing that cardiovascular side-effects could be undercounted – an article that later required correction. The potential effects of Covid-19 vaccines on heart health have been a focal point of right-leaning criticism. Last month, Levi was criticized for publishing a pre-print paper – a paper without peer review – that he co-authored with Dr Joseph Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, a vaccine skeptic. The paper alleged that people who took the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine were more likely to die than those who received the Moderna vaccine. Kennedy described Ross as 'a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth University, with a career spanning clinical medicine, research, and public health policy'. However, as first reported by CBS News, Ross's name does not appear in faculty directories for either school. A spokesperson for George Washington University told the outlet that Ross did work as a clinical professor, but 'has not held a faculty appointment … since 2017'. A spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University described Ross as 'an affiliate faculty member' at a regional hospital system in the Capitol region. He is also listed as a partner at Havencrest Capital Management, as a board member of 'multiple private healthcare companies'. Hibbeln is a California-based psychiatrist who previously served as acting chief for the section of nutritional neurosciences at the NIH. He describes himself as an expert on omega-3, a fatty acid found in seafood. He also serves on the advisory council of a non-profit that advocates for Americans to eat more seafood. He practices at Barton Health, a hospital system in Lake Tahoe, California. His work influenced US public health guidelines on fish consumption during pregnancy. Pagano is an emergency medicine physician from Los Angeles 'with over 40 years of clinical experience', and a 'strong advocate for evidence-based medicine', according to Kennedy.

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

• Chicago Tribune

US measles count now tops 1,200 cases, and Iowa announces an outbreak

The U.S. logged fewer than 20 measles cases this week, though Iowa announced the state's first outbreak Thursday and Georgia confirmed its second Wednesday. There have been 1,214 confirmed measles cases this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. Health officials in Texas, where the nation's biggest outbreak raged during the late winter and spring, confirmed six cases in the last week. There are three other major outbreaks in North America. The longest, in Ontario, Canada, has resulted in 2,179 cases from mid-October through June 17. The province logged its first death June 5 in a baby who got congenital measles but also had other preexisting conditions. Another outbreak in Alberta, Canada, has sickened 996 as of Thursday. And the Mexican state of Chihuahua had 2,335 measles cases and four deaths as of Friday, according to data from the state health ministry. Other U.S. states with active outbreaks — which the CDC defines as three or more related cases — include Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Oklahoma. In the U.S., two elementary school-aged children in the epicenter in West Texas and an adult in New Mexico have died of measles this year. All were unvaccinated. Measles vaccination rates drop after COVID-19 pandemic in counties across the USMeasles is caused by a highly contagious virus that's airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000. There are a total of 750 cases across 35 counties, most of them in West Texas, state health officials said Tuesday. Throughout the outbreak, 97 people have been hospitalized. State health officials estimated less than 1% of cases — fewer than 10 — are actively infectious. Fifty-five percent of Texas' cases are in Gaines County, where the virus started spreading in a close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite community. The county has had 413 cases since late January — just under 2% of its residents. The April 3 death in Texas was an 8-year-old child, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Local health officials said the child did not have underlying health conditions and died of 'what the child's doctor described as measles pulmonary failure.' A unvaccinated child with no underlying conditions died of measles in Texas in late February; Kennedy said the child was 6. New Mexico held steady Friday with a total of 81 cases. Seven people have been hospitalized since the outbreak started. Most of the state's cases are in Lea County. Sandoval County near Albuquerque has six cases, Eddy County has three, Doña Ana County has two. Chaves, Curry and San Juan counties have one each. An unvaccinated adult died of measles-related illness March 6. The person did not seek medical care. Oklahoma added one case Friday for a total of 17 confirmed and three probable cases. The state health department is not releasing which counties have cases. Arizona has four cases in Navajo County. They are linked to a single source, the county health department said June 9. All four were unvaccinated and had a history of recent international travel. Colorado has seen a total of 16 measles cases in 2025, which includes one outbreak of 10 related cases. The outbreak is linked to a Turkish Airlines flight that landed at Denver International Airport in mid-May. Four of the people were on the flight with the first case — an out-of-state traveler not included in the state count — while five got measles from exposure in the airport and one elsewhere. Health officials are also tracking an unrelated case in a Boulder County resident. The person was fully vaccinated but had 'recently traveled to Europe, where there are a large number of measles cases,' the state health department said. Other counties that have seen measles this year include Archuleta and Pueblo. Georgia has an outbreak of three cases in metro Atlanta, with the most recent infection confirmed Wednesday. The state has confirmed six total cases in 2025. The remaining three are part of an unrelated outbreak from January. Illinois health officials confirmed a four-case outbreak on May 5 in the far southern part of the state. It grew to eight cases as of June 6, but no new cases were reported in the following weeks, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. The state's other two cases so far this year were in Cook County, and are unrelated to the southern Illinois outbreak. Illinois unveils online tool showing measles vaccination rates by schoolIowa has had six total measles cases in 2025. Four are part of an outbreak in eastern Johnson County, among members of the same household. County health officials said the people are isolating at home, so they don't expect additional spread. Kansas has a total of 79 cases across 11 counties in the southwestern part of the state, with three hospitalizations. All but three of the cases are connected, and most are in Gray County. Montana had 22 measles cases as of Friday. Fourteen were in Gallatin County, which is where the first cases showed up — Montana's first in 35 years. Flathead and Yellowstone counties had two cases each, and Hill County had four cases. There are outbreaks in neighboring North Dakota and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. North Dakota, which hadn't seen measles since 2011, was up to 34 cases as of June 6, but has held steady since. Two of the people have been hospitalized. All of the people with confirmed cases were not vaccinated. There were 16 cases in Williams County in western North Dakota on the Montana border. On the eastern side of the state, there were 10 cases in Grand Forks County and seven cases in Cass County. Burke County, in northwest North Dakota on the border of Saskatchewan, Canada, had one case. Measles cases also have been reported this year in Alaska, Arkansas, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Health officials declared earlier outbreaks in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania over after six weeks of no new cases. Tennessee's outbreak also appears to be over. Cases and outbreaks in the U.S. are frequently traced to someone who caught the disease abroad. The CDC said in May that more than twice as many measles have come from outside of the U.S. compared to May of last year. Most of those are in unvaccinated Americans returning home. In 2019, the U.S. saw 1,274 cases and almost lost its status of having eliminated measles. The best way to avoid measles is to get the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. The first shot is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old. Getting another MMR shot as an adult is harmless if there are concerns about waning immunity, the CDC says. People who have documentation of receiving a live measles vaccine in the 1960s don't need to be revaccinated, but people who were immunized before 1968 with an ineffective vaccine made from 'killed' virus should be revaccinated with at least one dose, the agency said. People who have documentation that they had measles are immune and those born before 1957 generally don't need the shots because so many children got measles back then that they have 'presumptive immunity.' Measles has a harder time spreading through communities with high vaccination rates — above 95% — due to 'herd immunity.' But childhood vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the pandemic and more parents are claiming religious or personal conscience waivers to exempt their kids from required shots. Measles first infects the respiratory tract, then spreads throughout the body, causing a high fever, runny nose, cough, red, watery eyes and a rash. The rash generally appears three to five days after the first symptoms, beginning as flat red spots on the face and then spreading downward to the neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet. When the rash appears, the fever may spike over 104 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the CDC. Most kids will recover from measles, but infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death. There's no specific treatment for measles, so doctors generally try to alleviate symptoms, prevent complications and keep patients comfortable.