H5N1

Bird flu may now be spreading between humans, WHO fears

Joe Pinkstone
Fri, 24 February 2023 

Bird flu vaccine Cambodia health security science ducks avian influenza - Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images

The World Health Organisation is “really concerned” the current bird flu outbreak may now be spreading between people for the first time in more than 25 years.

The WHO has ordered a new bird flu vaccine to be made in response to the rapid spread of the strain of H5N1 avian influenza causing the current outbreak.

An 11-year-old girl died of bird flu in Cambodia this week while her father is also infected and 11 others are under observation, with some showing symptoms. Experts are worried the large cluster might mean that the virus has now evolved to be able to be passed from one human to another.

While captive and wild birds have been decimated worldwide by the current H5N1 strain there has so far been no evidence that it can pass between mammals.

If the virus has been able to cross the species gap from birds to humans then concern around bird flu and its potential to cause a pandemic will escalate.

No sustained transmission of bird flu has ever occurred but limited human-to-human transmission was reported in Hong Kong in 1997.

experts - AFP

Dr Sylvie Briand, WHO director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, said that the Cambodian outbreak was causing more alarm than isolated cases that have popped up in the intervening two decades.

“When you have only one case, you imagine that it's because this case was exposed to animals, either alive or dead. So for us it means it is a zoonotic infection,” she said on Friday.

“But when you see that there are a number of potential cases surrounding this initial case, you always wonder what has happened. Is it because maybe the initial case has transmitted the disease to other humans?

“And so we are really concerned about the potential human-to-human transmission coming from this initial spillover from animals.

“This is currently the investigation that is ongoing in the contacts of this girl in Cambodia. We are first trying to see if those contacts have H5N1 infection and that's why we are waiting for the laboratory confirmation of those cases.

“Secondly, once we have this confirmation, we will try to understand if those people have been exposed to animals or if those people have been contaminated by the initial case.”

Posters - Cambodia Ministry of Health

WHO staff have now been deployed on the ground in Cambodia and the results of these assessments will dictate the next steps.

Dr Richard Webby, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals, added that “in response to the spread of H5N1 and a little bit of evolution” a new vaccine specifically against the currently dominant strain is now to be developed.

“We are putting another H5 virus vaccine candidate into production and that will start soon,” he said.

Dr Webby added that the current stockpile of candidate virus vaccines - which could be deployed into full-fledged jab drives should the animal infection be proven to have made the jump to spread among people - is also being assessed to see whether it works against the currently dominant form of bird flu.

Evidence suggests that if the current strain behind the ongoing avian pandemic did jump to people then the existing stockpile would work well against it, even if it may take six months to create the updated jab.

“There has been a little bit of work looking at some of the serum collected from people who took part in vaccine trials to some of these earlier H5 clades and several of those people actually worked quite well with some of the recently circulating viruses,” Dr Webby said.

“From a vaccine stockpile and response point of view, I think this is encouraging and suggests the human response to some of the vaccines does induce a broad immunity that cross-reacts with a lot of the clades we are seeing.”

Dr Wenqing Zhang, WHO Global Influenza Programme chief, added that there were almost 20 current H5 vaccines licensed for pandemic use, and the new one would add to this armoury.

chickens - Jamie McDonald/Getty Images

The WHO announcement comes after the UKHSA commissioned Covid-like modelling for bird flu should person-to-person transmission be found in the UK.

The UKHSA has activated a new technical group to create modelling for a potential human outbreak of bird flu, which includes Prof Neil Ferguson, who was instrumental in the first Covid lockdown in 2020, and UKHSA chief medical adviser Prof Susan Hopkins.

The UKHSA is also looking into bird flu lateral flow tests, documents show, as well as investigating what is the best lab-based test to pick up the virus.

A source close to the matter told the Telegraph that a host of permutations were being drawn up, including a U-shaped severity curve, akin to seasonal flu; a Covid-like scenario where the oldest and most frail are more likely to die; and the possibility that it is dangerous to all people, like Spanish flu.

One of the scenarios being investigated by officials is if the virus is relatively mild, with an infection fatality rate of 0.25 per cent, similar to Covid.

The most severe hypothesis is if the virus is as deadly in people as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, with a fatality rate of around 2.5 per cent, and a hospitalisation rate of one in 20.

Some estimates of bird flu’s fatality rate in humans are as high as 60 per cent but experts say this may be misleading and inflated by sampling bias from when H5N1 first emerged 20 years ago.

The modelling marks an escalation in preparedness by health authorities as the country’s worst ever bird flu outbreak continues to ravage poultry farmers and wild bird colonies alike.

Covid-style model for bird flu pandemic drawn up by health officials


Joe Pinkstone
Thu, 23 February 2023 

Ducks gather at a farm in Snoa village outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023 

- Heng Sinith

Health officials are drawing up Covid-esque modelling to see what would happen if the current bird flu pandemic evolved to be able to spread from human-to-human.

There is currently no evidence that the H5N1 avian influenza strain that has killed hundreds of thousands of birds in Britain can spread between mammals.

A nationwide housing order has been in place since November mandating that all captive birds be kept inside, which has led to a decrease in infections.

But the UKHSA has now activated a new technical group to create modelling for a potential human outbreak of bird flu.

The group features UKHSA’s own experts as well as some external academics who were prominent in the Covid response.

'Bird flu lateral flow tests'

The 26-person strong group includes UKHSA Chief Medical Advisor Prof Susan Hopkins; Imperial’s Prof Neil Ferguson, who has worked on bird flu for decades but is best known for his Spring 2020 projections which brought about the first Covid lockdown; and Prof Munir Iqbal, head of the Avian Influenza Group at The Pirbright Institute.

The UKHSA is also looking into bird flu lateral flow tests, documents show, as well as investigating what is the best lab-based test to pick up the virus.

“To facilitate preparedness, planning and improvements to surveillance, scenarios of early human transmission are being developed,” the UKHSA says in a technical briefing.

A source close to the matter told the Telegraph that a host of permutations are being drawn up, including a U-shaped severity curve, akin to seasonal flu; a Covid-like scenario where the oldest and most frail are more likely to die; and the possibility that it is dangerous to all people, like Spanish flu.
Models currently 'completely hypothetical'

The findings come after it was reported an 11-year-old girl died of bird flu in Cambodia and 12 other people have been infected.

Prof Iqbal said the UKHSA models were currently “completely hypothetical” as all available data indicates there is no ability for the virus to spread between people.

One of the scenarios being investigated by officials is if the virus is relatively mild, with an infection fatality rate of 0.25 per cent, similar to Covid.

The most severe hypothesis is if the virus is as deadly in people as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, with a fatality rate of around 2.5 per cent, and a hospitalisation rate of one in 20.

Some estimates of bird flu’s fatality rate in humans are as high as 60 per cent but experts say this may be misleading and inflated by sampling bias from when H5N1 first emerged 20 years ago.

The modelling marks an escalation in preparedness by health authorities as the country’s worst ever bird flu outbreak continues to ravage poultry farmers and wild bird colonies alike.
H5N1 now 'the world’s biggest pandemic threat'

Sir Jeremy Farrar, a former member of Sage and Chief Scientist designate of the World Health Organization, said the avian H5N1 virus is now the world’s biggest pandemic threat.

He called this week for governments to make vaccines against the virus as a precaution.

Amid the backdrop of the ongoing Covid Inquiry the news of fresh modelling for a potential viral outbreak is likely to cause alarm among both the public and policymakers.

The modelling from UKHSA will likely be key in deciding if any actions are required to curb spread, should the unlikely event of human-to-human transmission occur.

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of avian influenza A H5N1 viruses

 - Phanie / Alamy Stock Photo

“The aims right now are to determine what level of surveillance we need to detect an event at an early stage,” a scientific source told The Telegraph.

“We haven't really seen very many people in Europe getting infected [with H5N1 avian influenza] and the people who have been infected have been very mildly ill or completely asymptomatic.

“It’s still H5N1 but it's evolved in enormous amount since it first emerged in Southeast Asia literally 20 years ago and it may have evolved more to be a virus which is well adapted at infecting a very wide range of species of birds, but less well adapted to infecting, certainly people, but maybe mammals.

“But we don’t know enough to be sure about that, which is why this work is going on but I think the risk is perhaps lower than it was.”

Scientists are concerned that with so much virus in birds, mammals are now more prone to eat an infected carcass and become infected that way. It is then possible that the virus evolves inside the infected mammals to be able to spread.

“The modelling right now is very focused on how much surveillance we need, in particular in hospitals which will pick up the severe cases, to be able to be sure that we can pick up an outbreak situation within a certain timescale,” a source said.

“There's no modelling of how bad the epidemic could be, or what we would do in terms of policy responses.”

Bird flu UK 2021 outbreak ‘largest ever’ as dozens of cases recorded in chickens and wild birds across country


Half a million birds have been culled to stop the spread of avian flu, with UK chief vet ‘very concerned’ about scale of winter 2021 outbreak

By Henry Sandercock
Thursday, 9th December 2021, 2:25 pm



Half a million birds have had to be culled to prevent the spread of bird flu (image: Shutterstock)

Around half a million birds have had to be culled as the UK battles what has been called the “largest ever” outbreak of bird flu.

Dozens of highly pathogenic avian flu cases have been recorded across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland despite the introduction of UK-wide prevention measures in November.

It has ripped through poultry farms, wild bird populations of geese, ducks and swans, as well as a number of birds of prey.

While bird flu’s risk to humans remains low, there have been warnings the virus could jump across if people come into close contact with infected birds.

Concern over case numbers

The UK’s chief veterinary officer Christine Middlemiss said there are 40 infected poultry farm premises in the UK - 33 in England, three in Wales, two in Scotland and two in Northern Ireland.

These cases have been brought into the country by migratory birds which are flying south for the winter months from places like Russia and Eastern Europe.

Bird flu outbreaks in the UK are not uncommon and tend to occur between autumn and spring, although the fact that they are occurring so early on in the migratory season has taken experts by surprise.

Environment Secretary George Eustice described the 2021 bird flu outbreak as the “largest ever” in the UK (image: Getty Images)

Dr Middlemiss told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there was a “phenomenal level” of bird flu and that it had “huge human, animal and trade implications”.

She said she was “very concerned” about bird flu, and that having 40 infected premises is “a really high number for the time of year”.

The vet said around 500,000 birds have had to be culled.

“I know that sounds a huge number, and of course for those keepers affected it’s really devastating.

“But in terms of food supply impact it’s actually relatively a very small number in terms of egg supply, meat, chicken and so on.”

According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) figures, more than 1.1 billion chickens were killed for their meat in the UK in 2020.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Environment Secretary George Eustice said: “Each year the UK faces a seasonal risk in incursion of avian influenza associated with migratory wild birds.

“While we have that each year, I have to say this year we are now seeing the largest-ever outbreak in the UK.”

‘Bird lockdown’ needed until spring

An Avian Influenza Prevention Zone, which requires farmers and birdkeepers to follow strict biosecurity standards, was declared across the UK on 3 November.

This then became a nationwide housing order on 29 November - a measure that is essentially a lockdown for poultry and pets as they are stopped from going outside.

It means that when you pick up British free range eggs or chicken in the supermarket, the animal might not actually have been reared that way.

However, this shouldn’t apply to turkey products as most turkeys were killed and processed before the housing order was introduced.

Dr Middlemiss said “we are going to need to keep up these levels of heightened biosecurity” until the spring.

Defra has said the new housing measures will be kept under regular review.

Advice for people with chickens or bird feeders

People who keep chickens and want to feed wild birds need to make sure everything is kept “scrupulously clean” and “absolutely separate” to avoid infecting their own flocks, Dr Middlemiss advised.

The risk to human health from bird flu remains very low, according to public health advice, and there is a low food safety risk.

An RSPB spokesperson said: “Everyone should take care to maintain good hygiene when feeding garden birds, regularly cleaning feeders outside with mild disinfectant, removing old bird food, spacing out feeders as much as possible, and washing your hands.”

Bird flu UK 2021: Defra ‘bird lockdown’ explained amid outbreaks of avian flu across the UK

Can humans catch bird flu? Avian influenza symptoms in chickens, and what causes virus - as UK cases confirmed

Bird flu: What is the avian flu strain H10N3 found in China - and could it be a risk to humans?

INDIA
Bird Flu in Kerala: 12,000 ducks were culled in Kerala’s Alappuzha district, restrictions imposed in affected areas

By: FE Online |
December 11, 2021 2:38 PM

Use and sale of eggs, meat and manure of ducks, chickens, quails and domestic birds in the affected area has also been prohibited in the affected area.



Last year too, the district reported the influenza outbreak but was contained for being localized in nature. (PTI Image)

A total of 12,000 ducks were culled in ward number 10 of the Thakazhi gram panchayat in Kerala’s Alappuzha district after the state reported bird flu cases on Thursday. The culled birds were buried safely within a radius of one kilometre in the 10th ward of Thakazhi panchayat. The animal rearers will be compensated according to the government norms, animal husbandry minister J Cinchu Rani in the state capital said.

The ward number 10 of the Thakazhi gram panchayat and the area has been declared as a containment zone, strict restrictions on movement on people and vehicles has been imposed. Use and sale of eggs, meat and manure of ducks, chickens, quails and domestic birds in the affected area has also been prohibited in the affected area.

Alapuzha District Collector chaired an emergency meeting on Friday and decided to step up its measures to prevent the bird flu from spreading to other areas like Champakulam, Nedumudi, Muttar, Viyapuram, Karuvatta, Thrikkunnapuzha, Thakazhi, Purakkad, Ambalapuzha South, Ambalapuzha North, Edathva panchayats and Harippad Municipality areas where restrictions are applicable.

While the Rapid Response Teams will be deployed in the affected areas and distribute preventive medicines to the people, the Department of Animal Welfare will ensure the service of Rapid Response Teams and bury the birds.

The Assistant Forest Conservator on the other hand will monitor and examine whether the migrant birds in the affected areas were infected with the disease. The animal husbandry department has been asked to submit daily reports on bird flu prevention activities.

The state animal husbandry department confirmed bird flu (H5N1) influenza) on Thursday after reports of some samples sent to the National Institute of High-Security Animal Disease in Bhopal turned in. A total 140 samples were sent for test and 26 samples tested positive for bird flu.

Last year too, the district reported the influenza outbreak but was contained for being localized in nature. Bird Flu can spread to humans in rare conditions, and if it happens, it can trigger a person to person transmission, experts said.

‘Major Leap’ in Bird Virus Threatens Yet Another Pandemic

David Axe
Mon, February 6, 2023

Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via Reuters

The same highly pathogenic bird-flu virus that’s killed tens of millions of chickens and other birds over the past year just got a lot closer to infecting people, too.

An unusual outbreak of the H5N1 virus in minks—relatives of weasels—at a Spanish fur farm last fall also exposed the farm’s staff to the virus. Swift action by health authorities helped prevent any human infections. This time.

But bird flu isn’t going away. And as H5N1 continues to circulate in domestic and wild birds, causing millions of animal deaths and tightening the supply of eggs, it’s also getting closer and closer to the human population. “This… avian influenza has the potential to become a major problem to humans,” Adel Talaat, a professor of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told The Daily Beast.

It might be a matter of time before H5N1 achieves large-scale “zoonosis” and makes the leap to the human species. If and when that happens, we could have yet another major viral crisis on our hands. On top of the COVID pandemic, worsening seasonal RSV, the occasional monkeypox flare-up and annual flu outbreaks.

Reports this week suggested that the current wave of bird flu could be crossing over into mammals with more regularity. Scientists found traces of bird flu in seals that died in a “mass mortality event” in the Caspian Sea in December, and the BBC reported this week that tests in Britain had found the virus in a range of mammals up and down the country. On Jan. 9, the World Health Organization was informed that a 9-year-old girl in Ecuador had tested positive.

Bird flu isn’t new. Scientists first identified the virus back in the 1870s. There’ve been dozens of major outbreaks over the years—and they’ve grown more frequent, and more severe, as the global population of domestic poultry has expanded in order to feed a growing human population.

H5N1, a more-severe “highly pathogenic avian influenza” virus—or HPAI—first appeared in China in the 1990s. It and other HPAIs have achieved zoonosis on a small scale, mostly in Asia. Several dozen people have died of bird flu in recent decades.

But so far, bird flu has mostly infected, well, birds. That makes it a huge problem for poultry farmers. And for people who buy eggs, of course. The current H5N1 outbreak has killed, or compelled farmers to cull, nearly 60 million chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks in the United States alone. The cullings drove up the price of eggs to nearly $5 per dozen at U.S. grocery stores last fall, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s several times the long-term average price.

Bird Flu Taking the Leap

Higher egg prices will be the least of our problems if large-scale zoonosis ever triggers a human bird-flu pandemic. And that’s why scientists and health officials keep a close eye on H5N1 and related HPAIs as they spread and mutate. For epidemiologists, the bird-flu outbreak at the mink farm in northwestern Spain was a giant red flag. An ominous sign that major zoonosis might be getting more likely.

Spanish health officials first noticed the outbreak in early October, when the death rate among minks at a large farm in Galicia tripled. Biological samples from the farm’s 52,000 minks contained H5N1. It was the first time bird flu had infected farmed minks in Europe.

Authorities ordered the culling of all the minks at the affected farm. At the same time, they quarantined and tested the farm’s 11 workers. Luckily, none had caught the virus.

It was a close call. And all the more worrying because no one knows for sure what happened. “The source of the outbreak remains unknown,” a team led by virologist Montserrat Agüero reported in the latest issue of Eurosurveillance, an epidemiology journal. It’s possible wild birds spread the virus to the minks. It’s also possible the pathogen was present in the minks’ food, which contains raw chicken.

Equally troubling, the virus didn’t just spread from birds to minks. It may also have spread from minks to other minks, as well, Agüero’s team discovered. “This is suggested by the increasing number of infected animals identified after the confirmation of the disease.”

That post-zoonosis transmission within a new species is how an animal virus such as H5N1 could cause a new pandemic. It’s what happened with COVID, after the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread from bats or pangolins to people back in late 2019. It’s what happened with monkeypox, after that pathogen first leaped from monkeys and rodents to human beings, possibly decades ago.

“The ability to achieve sustained transmission in a mammal is a major leap for flu viruses, so the mink event is a big deal,” James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told The Daily Beast. “It definitely increases the risk for [a] species-jump to humans.”

The Spanish bird-flu outbreak has a happy ending for all involved—except those 52,000 minks, of course. But the next outbreak might not end so neatly. Not if scientists are late noticing a zoonotic leap, or if viral transmission outpaces health officials’ ability to cull affected animals, quarantine exposed people and isolate the virus.

Bird flu more than many viruses demands constant vigilance. It’s infecting more birds than ever, jumping to mammals in more places and learning new genetic tricks that increase the risk to humans.

All that is to say, our bird-flu problem might get worse before it gets better. “The ongoing widespread outbreaks of HPAI are concerning across the board,” Lawler said.

The Daily Beast.

Avian flu is devastating farms in California’s ‘Egg Basket’ as outbreaks roil poultry industry



A worker moves crates of eggs at the Sunrise Farms processing plant in Petaluma, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, which has seen an outbreak of avian flu in recent weeks. 

Ettamarie Peterson holds a chicken at her farm in Petaluma, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. She’s concerned her flock of 50 hens could be infected with avian flu. Jan. 11, 2024. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest. 

A worker moves crates of eggs at the Sunrise Farms processing plant in Petaluma, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, which has seen an outbreak of avian flu in recent weeks. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest. 


BY TERRY CHEA
 January 26, 2024Share

PETALUMA, Calif. (AP) — Last month, Mike Weber got the news every poultry farmer fears: His chickens tested positive for avian flu.

Following government rules, Weber’s company, Sunrise Farms, had to slaughter its entire flock of egg-laying hens — 550,000 birds — to prevent the disease from infecting other farms in Sonoma County north of San Francisco.

“It’s a trauma. We’re all going through grief as a result of it,” said Weber, standing in an empty hen house. “Petaluma is known as the Egg Basket of the World. It’s devastating to see that egg basket go up in flames.”

A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest.

The highly contagious virus has ravaged Sonoma County, where officials have declared a state of emergency. During the past two months, nearly a dozen commercial farms have had to destroy more than 1 million birds to control the outbreak, dealing an economic blow to farmers, workers and their customers.

Merced County in Central California also has been hit hard, with outbreaks at several large commercial egg-producing farms in recent weeks.

Experts say bird flu is spread by ducks, geese and other migratory birds. The waterfowl can carry the virus without getting sick and easily spread it through their droppings to chicken and turkey farms and backyard flocks through droppings and nasal discharges.

California poultry farms are implementing strict biosecurity measures to curb the spread of the disease. State Veterinarian Annette Jones urged farmers to keep their flocks indoors until June, including organic chickens that are required to have outdoor access.

“We still have migration going for another couple of months. So we’ve got to be as vigilant as possible to protect our birds,” said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation.

The loss of local hens led to a spike in egg prices in the San Francisco Bay Area over the holidays before supermarkets and restaurants found suppliers from outside the region.

While bird flu has been around for decades, the current outbreak of the virus that began in early 2022 has prompted officials to slaughter nearly 82 million birds, mostly egg-laying chickens, in 47 U.S. states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Whenever the disease is found the entire flock is slaughtered to help limit the spread of the virus.

The price of a dozen eggs more than doubled to $4.82 at its peak in January 2023. Egg prices returned to their normal range as egg producers built up their flocks and outbreaks were controlled. Turkey and chicken prices also spiked, partly due to the virus.

“I think this is an existential issue for the commercial poultry industry. The virus is on every continent, except for Australia at this point,” said Maurice Pitesky, a poultry expert at the University of California, Davis.

Climate change is increasing the risk of outbreaks as changing weather patterns disrupt the migratory patterns of wild birds, Pitesky said. For example, exceptional rainfall last year created new waterfowl habitat throughout California, including areas close to poultry farms.

In California, the outbreak has impacted more than 7 million chickens in about 40 commercial flocks and 24 backyard flocks, with most of the outbreaks occurring over the past two months on the North Coast and Central Valley, according to the USDA.

Industry officials are worried about the growing number of backyard chickens that could become infected and spread avian flu to commercial farms.

“We have wild birds that are are full of virus. And if you expose your birds to these wild birds, they might get infected and ill,” said Rodrigo Gallardo, a UC Davis researcher who studies avian influenza.

Gallardo advises the owners of backyard chickens to wear clean clothes and shoes to protect their flocks from getting infected. If an unusual number of chickens die, they should be tested for avian flu.

Ettamarie Peterson, a retired teacher in Petaluma, has a flock of about 50 chickens that produce eggs she sells from her backyard barn for 50 cents each.

“I’m very concerned because this avian flu is transmitted by wild birds, and there’s no way I can stop the wild birds from coming through and leaving the disease behind,” Peterson said. “If your flock has any cases of it, you have to destroy the whole flock.”

Sunrise Farms, which was started by Weber’s great-grandparents more than a century ago, was infected despite putting in place strict biosecurity measures to protect the flock.

“The virus got to the birds so bad and so quickly you walked in and the birds were just dead,” Weber said. “Heartbreaking doesn’t describe how you feel when you walk in and perfectly healthy young birds have been just laid out.”

After euthanizing more than half a million chickens at Sunrise Farms, Weber and his employees spent the Christmas holiday discarding the carcasses. Since then, they’ve been cleaning out and disinfecting the hen houses.

Weber hopes the farm will get approval from federal regulators to bring chicks back to the farm this spring. Then it would take another five months before the hens are mature enough to lay eggs.

He feels lucky that two farms his company co-owns have not been infected and are still producing eggs for his customers. But recovering from the outbreak won’t be easy.

“We have a long road ahead,” Weber said. “We’re going to make another run of it and try to keep this family of employees together because they’ve worked so hard to build this into the company that it is.”

PHOTOS: Avian flu is devastating farms in California’s ‘Egg Basket’ as outbreaks roil poultry industry

Aerial view of the Sunrise Farms processing plant in Petaluma, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, which has seen an outbreak of avian flu in recent weeks. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest.

Eggs are cleaned and disinfected at the Sunrise Farms processing plant in Petaluma, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, which has seen an outbreak of avian flu in recent weeks. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest. 

Chickens stand in a holding pen at Ettamarie Peterson’s farmin Petaluma, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. There are concerns that the flock of 50 hens could be infected with avian flu. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest.

Aerial view of Ettamarie Peterson’s farm, where she has a flock of about 50 chickens that produce eggs she sells. She’s concerned her flock could be infected with avian flu. Petaluma, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest. 

Mike Weber watches an employee clean a hen house at his egg farm in Petaluma, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. His company Sunrise Farms had to euthanize 550,000 chickens after avian flu was detected among the flock. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest.

A worker moves crates of eggs at the Sunrise Farms processing plant in Petaluma, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, which has seen an outbreak of avian flu in recent weeks. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest.

Mike Weber stands in an empty hen house at Sunrise Farms, which had to euthanize 550,000 chickens after avian flu was detected among the flock in Petaluma, Calif. Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest. 

Ettamarie Peterson stands in a holding pen with chickens at her farm in Petaluma, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. She’s concerned her flock of 50 hens could be infected with avian flu. A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest. 

A worker moves crates of eggs at the Sunrise Farms processing plant in Petaluma, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, which has seen an outbreak of avian flu in recent weeks. 

A grocery store employee stocks cartons of eggs for display at a Petaluma Market in Sonoma County, on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, where avian flu infections shut down a cluster of egg farms in recent months.

PHOTOS BY TERRY CHEA

As avian influenza spreads in birds, conspiracy theories about the disease infect the internet


Chicks hatch from their eggs. Credit: Otwarte Klatki/Andrew Skowron. CC BY 2.0.


By Matt Field | May 18, 2022

As H5N1 avian influenza spreads in birds around the United States and elsewhere, causing farmers to cull tens of millions of chickens and other farmed birds, baseless conspiracy theories about the severity of the bird flu and its origins are spreading with it. On TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms, users are questioning whether the virus is a bioweapon, suggesting it’s a ploy by Bill Gates, and claiming a TV interview with a former CDC director offers proof that the disease outbreaks were planned or that the flu news was designed to scare people. None of which is true.

So far, only two humans—one in Colorado and one in the UK—are known to have contracted the H5N1 flu virus that’s circulating now. Both had direct contact with infected birds.

The posts about bird flu are reminiscent of false conspiracy theories that circulated during an earlier time in the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media users are calling the outbreaks among birds a “plandemic,” a term popularized by those who pushed a range of false claims about the coronavirus pandemic. Across, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter, users have repurposed a video clip of former CDC Director Robert Redfield calling COVID-19 a wakeup call for a future avian influenza pandemic that could occur, if a form of bird flu were to mutate and become easily transmissible to and among humans. In March, on the Christian network Trinity Broadcasting Network, Redfield said bird flu could be “the great pandemic” of the future. Redfield was raising the alarm over what such a crisis could entail, but the social media posts appeared to use the clip to bolster outrageous allegations.

A TikTok post falsely claiming that bird flu outbreaks were planned.

“Wow. So the former CDC director who, for the record, was very much involved in and entirely aligned with Dr. Fauci on the response to COVID-19 is telling us in no uncertain terms that yes bird flu will be the next plandemic,” one TikTok user said. On Twitter and Facebook, users posted the video, along with this text: “Former head of the CDC Robert R. Redfield confirming the next scamdemic will be bird flu which will kill ‘10 to 50 percent’ of the population.”

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Other posts implied that Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist who often found himself the target of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, is behind the avian influenza scare in order to boost his investments. “Bird flu … yeah right! It’s Bill gates because organic farms animals are his biggest competitors of fake meat. Bill gates is the biggest threat for humanity…change my mind!” one Twitter user wrote. 

A false claim about bird flu on Twitter.

The AP first reported the spread of bird flu conspiracy theories on Tuesday, noting that some online posters are claiming that avian influenza is a manufactured bioweapon or that it is spread by 5G cellphone towers, false claims that have also been made about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The wire service noted that while the virus is rarely harmful to people, it’s having a devastating impact on poultry operations, where farmers have culled millions of birds in Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota and elsewhere. One man in Colorado was diagnosed with an avian influenza infection in April. He had been working to cull infected birds.

According to the CDC, officials began detecting the H5N1 flu in the United States in January. Since then the virus has been found in wild and farmed birds in 35 states and has affected some 37 million birds. The last time officials detected the virus in the country was in 2016.

With an ongoing pandemic, inflation concerns, baby food shortages, and a war in Ukraine, current events were already providing all but endless fodder for conspiracy theorists to use in online efforts that capitalize on fear. Bird flu appears to be just one of the latest examples.

Matt Field is Editor, Disruptive Technologies at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Before joining the Bulletin, he covered the... Read More

Bird Flu Outbreaks: When Will We Learn Our Lesson?

Experts say previous outbreaks should have taught us how to avoid new ones, like the one that’s killing millions of birds right now.


Turkeys being raised on a turkey farm. USDA photo by Scott Bauer.


May 18, 2022 - by Erica Cirino

Last month a man in Colorado became the first human known to have contracted a new, highly infectious strain of avian flu.

The man — a prisoner culling infected poultry while on a work-release program — only experienced a case of mild fatigue.

The birds contracting this new version of the H5N1 flu have not been so lucky.

Since it first turned up, this highly transmissible and lethal new strain of avian flu has circulated at high rates among domestic fowl on backyard and commercial farms, resulting in the deaths of a reported 37 million birds on farms in the United States alone. Some died directly from the infection, while many others were culled as part of the country’s response to the disease outbreak. Bird flu has spread to at least 176 commercial farms and 134 backyard bird farms, housing mainly poultry like chickens and turkeys, across 34 states. It has hit especially hard in the Midwest and Central United States, regions with intensive commercial poultry operations.

The disease has also turned up in wild birds, with fatal consequences never previously observed. The first confirmed case was reported in a wild bird killed by a hunter and tested in January as part of routine U.S. wildlife-disease surveillance efforts. As of this month, more than 1,000 wild birds across the country have died after being infected.

Wild birds, including many waterfowl species, are often carriers of low-pathogenic or mild bird flu viruses. These viruses rarely cause severe disease in their natural hosts. But lethal bird flu viruses can and do kill wildlife, and this year’s hybrid H5N1 is proving especially deadly to wild birds in the United States and Europe.

It’s also spreading fast: While people have been busy navigating the second year of the global Covid-19 pandemic, this worrying bird virus outbreak has spread in more than 60 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Many European countries face record-high levels of lethal bird flu.

Repeat Offender

“This clade [family] of H5 viruses has been with us since 1996,” says Bryan Richards, emerging disease coordinator at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Much of the government’s research on bird flu impacts on wild birds is done by the Geological Survey at the National Wildlife Health Center. “As with all viruses, it has changed over time, as have its relative impacts. Over the past two years or so, this specific H5N1 lineage has had increasing impacts in Europe and Asia. Now that this lineage of virus is here in North America, our experience is similar to that in Europe.”

As the virus rages and government workers deal with the gruesome task of killing infected birds and disposing of the corpses, experts have stood up with one key question:

Why have we allowed this to happen again?

Photo: Ella Mullins (CC BY 2.0)

The last time a bird flu epidemic hit this hard in the United States was in 2014-2015. That event, considered the worst-ever animal disease outbreak in U.S. history, struck 211 commercial farms and 21 backyard farms, mainly in the West and Midwest. The government responded by killing tens of millions of domestic birds to try to stop the spread, at huge cost to the federal budget and with no clear beneficial results — the same way it’s responding to the present lethal outbreak.

Then and now, bird flu proves that a reaction-oriented approach to serious viruses emerging at the intersection of human and nonhuman health is inadequate for stopping the spread of disease. Many animal-health and infectious disease experts now underscore the need to prevent rather than fight the next animal disease epidemic.
The Previous (But Not the Last) Outbreak

The 2014-2015 outbreak cost the federal government nearly $900 million to respond to and provide indemnity (financial security) to farmers forced to kill their flocks. Still, U.S. poultry farmers reported economic losses of $1.6 billion, and the poultry industry lost at least $3.3 billion from that single epidemic.

Government staff and scientists examined the outbreak and response strategy to see if they could shed any light to help the country avoid another epidemic. Their final report found that “despite” the government’s massive effort to stop the spread by killing all birds on infected farms, while also using quarantine and disinfection, bird flu continued to swiftly infect huge numbers of domestic birds.

USDA Photo by Preston Keres.

We’re now seeing a repeat of that failed strategy. During the current outbreak, government employees and contractors are again tasked with culling tens of millions of infected domestic birds, mainly poultry like chickens and turkeys. Paying for that plus indemnity to farmers for lost birds has cost the government $400 million in emergency funding since March.

One reason why this response doesn’t work is that wild birds spread bird flu but cannot be contained.

Research shows bird flu can live in the natural environment for extended periods, and healthy wild birds can become infected by living in proximity to those who are ill.
Watching for Danger

As a country we’re constantly on the outlook for warnings of possible new disease outbreaks.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Geological Survey, along with their state and Tribal partners, have for decades collaborated to test deceased, hunter-caught and live wild birds for bird flu, especially at areas popular for congregating birds like lakes and wetlands.

That kicked into overdrive this past year. When bird flu cases surged in Europe in 2021, these partners coordinated testing of thousands of additional birds outside their usual quota of about 3,000 samples per year.

USGS scientist Dede Goldberg swabs a pintail duck for avian influenza at Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado. 

Photo: Robert Dusek/USGS

“This year’s surveillance was extremely effective,” says Richards of the USGS. “It provided situational awareness, early detection and warning. We did a dramatic amount surveillance in fall and winter based on the increased activity in Europe. We’ve been watching.”

But watching for outbreaks is not the same as preventing them.
Failure by Design

Some lethal bird flu cases seem to spring from direct interactions between wild and domestic birds. This can happen in backyards and on poultry farms that have full or partial outdoor access.

On farms where birds are kept exclusively indoors, the movement of farmworkers and equipment outdoors and among farms — common practice on some of the biggest poultry operations — can allow lethal bird flu to enter.

While wild birds carry disease, large commercial farms act as super-spreaders and disease incubators.

Laying hens are housed with other birds in wire battery cages, each allotted a space with a footprint smaller than the width of a single sheet of letter-sized paper. Birds are stacked side by side and sometimes on top of one another.

Meanwhile chickens and turkeys raised to be slaughtered and sold for their meat can live in flocks of 10,000 or more birds, who spend their entire lives indoors.

The more birds on a farm, the less natural the living conditions, the lower the costs to keep each bird — and the higher the potential profits in today’s commercial-dominated food landscape.

“As a general principle, once avian influenza outbreaks are present in farms, the disease can spread easily within and between farms when biosecurity measures are not applied properly,” said a spokesperson from World Organisation for Animal Health, an intergovernmental group focused on animal disease control. “On larger farms, where many birds are kept in close contact with one another, the virus can be amplified as more and more birds get infected. With more infections there is also greater opportunity for the virus to mutate.”

Sometimes the virus spreads beyond close contact, as scientists found when they studied the 2014-2015 outbreak in Iowa, which boasts the nation’s highest egg production and has a high density of commercial poultry farms. The researchers discovered a pattern of farm-to-farm spread within the state and possibly even to nearby states, with the virus carried from neighbor to neighbor through the air. It seems disease builds up in the air on large commercial farms, particularly those with poor ventilation and crowded animal conditions — suggesting these farms played a key role in the spread of avian influenza in 2014 and 2015.

All of this has taken avian flu to the next level in terms of infectiousness and time between outbreaks.

Lethal bird flu viruses arose alongside modern agriculture and globalization and continue to emerge at an increasingly rapid pace, along with animal-rearing rates and farm size. Globally, from 1959 to 1995, lethal bird flu viruses broke out at a rate of once every 2.6 years. From 1996 to 2008, outbreaks arose at a rate of once every 1.2 years.

“Industrial livestock production plays an important part in the emergence, spread and amplification of pathogens, some of which can be transmitted to people,” said Peter Stevenson, OBE, chief policy advisor at Compassion in World Farming, a global movement working to advance farm animal welfare and whose work has helped ban some industrial-farming practices seen as unethical and unhealthy, like keeping hens in battery cages, in Europe. He pointed out that the United Nations Environment and the International Livestock Research Institute identified “unsustainable agricultural intensification and increasing demand for animal protein as major drivers of zoonotic disease emergence.”

Unintended Consequences

In the wild, the 2014-2015 outbreak mainly killed waterfowl and birds of prey that had eaten waterfowl. This time around a much wider range of species — about 50 — has been affected, including many kinds of ducks and geese, birds of prey like eagles, hawks and owls, shorebirds like sanderlings and gulls, and vultures, crows and grackles.

When infected, wild birds typically exhibit neurological abnormalities such as lethargy or seizures before succumbing to disease.

“In 2015 there were no major ‘wild bird mortality events,’ ” or situations where masses of birds are found dead in one area,” says Richards. “But now we’ve seen a few: 1,000 lesser scaup dead in Florida, 50 Canada geese dead in New Hampshire; huge numbers of snow geese, Ross’s geese, and Canada geese in the Midwest.”

Wildlife scientists will continue to monitor lethal bird flu and keep track of its spread. What they’ve seen so far is unprecedented, but — having studied bird flu’s seasonal patterns — scientists expect at least somewhat of an ebb and flow of disease in the coming months.

“Now it is moving north, but we expect it will come back south in the fall with migration again,” says Richards. “It’s a safe bet there will be a lot of surveillance as they migrate south in the fall.”
An Uncertain Future

U.S. agencies and the international OIE reiterate in their lethal bird-flu communications that it’s essential farms and farm employees take disease-preventing precautions — termed “biosecurity” — to slow and ultimately help stop the spread.

However, biosecurity measures — including changing clothes before and after interacting with poultry and frequent disinfecting of boots, tools, and other equipment — are all voluntary and so not easily enforced, especially on large farms with many employees and many birds. That needs to be addressed, experts say.

Biosecurity: USDA and contract workers wear personal protective gear that does not leave a premises without proper cleaning. 

USDA APHIS photo Mike Milleson.

Another lesson that’s come out of the past few outbreaks is this: We need to rethink our farms and food systems.

“A certain way to reduce risk of zoonosis and emerging infectious diseases globally … is to reduce dependence on intensive animal-based food production systems,” says Stevenson, pointing to findings in a recent report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

That involves eating less meat as a society, as well as using well-planned approaches to growing plants and raising domestic animals in ways that are considered ethical, ecologically sound, fair and humane. Experts also point out that it’s vitally important to protect nature so that wild animals stay healthy and aren’t forced to interact with people — a common effect of deforestation and development.

Reducing our dependence on industrial farms is not always cheap, but it saves major costs in the long run as farmers create life-sustaining systems that keep animals healthy and best prevent disease. According to an international team of animal disease and ecology experts, “Even a one percent reduction in risk of viral zoonotic disease emergence would be cost-effective.” In contrast, conventional commercial poultry farms are owned by major corporations that appear to give little thought to any tasks other than maximizing profits. On these major farms, which are prevalent in the United States, birds are commonly sick, crowded and in constant pain.

Besides causing major animal welfare concerns, industrial farming has hugely negative effects on the environment, creating serious pollution and contributing to the climate crisis through generation of greenhouse gases. U.S. farmworkers are often people of color and are often exploited.

Experts say shifting our ideas of what we accept as normal in our food system, both nationally and globally, could significantly transform the way we value people, nonhuman animals, and the planet, and in turn could prevent the next pandemic — to which we’re all vulnerable.

But is there hope for achieving that? The experts we spoke with aren’t too sure.

“These companies have immense political power, which they use to influence policymakers and to obstruct reforms,” says Stevenson. “They are able to shape the narratives that entrench the status quo.”

Until we learn from the lessons of this and other outbreaks, it seems the status quo will continue to involve lethal bird flu and devastating impacts on domestic and wild birds.

Erica Cirino is a freelance science writer and artist exploring the intersection of the human and nonhuman worlds. She is author of the book Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis.
http://www.ericacirino.com/

The Revelator Newsletter

An initiative of the Center for Biological Diversity

ALONG WITH TRUSS THERE IS BIRD FLU
Anti-Bird flu measures in place across Great Britain

Claire Marshall - BBC Environment & Rural Affairs Correspondent
Mon, October 17, 2022 

A ranger at the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust's Langford Lake reserve removes the carcasses of two dead swans, thought to be infected with bird flu

Bird keepers in England, Scotland and Wales must implement strict biosecurity measures to stop bird flu spreading, the government has announced.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs introduced the measure amid the country's largest ever bird flu outbreak.

It follows regional indoor housing measures introduced last week in Norfolk, Suffolk and parts of Essex.

The risk to human health from the virus remains very low, the government said.

The chief veterinary officers from England, Scotland and Wales declared an Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (AIPZ) across Great Britain to prevent the disease spreading amongst poultry and captive birds.


The move followed an increase in the number of detections of avian influenza in wild birds and on commercial premises.

Across the United Kingdom, 190 cases have been confirmed since late October 2021, with over 30 of these confirmed since the beginning of this month.

"We've never had to do this before, we've never had this level of environmental infection going on before that's posing such a risk," Prof Christine Middlemiss, the UK's chief veterinary officer, told the BBC.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) advised that the risk to public health from the virus was very low and the Food Standards Agency advised that avian influenzas posed a very low food safety risk for consumers. It said properly cooked poultry and poultry products, including eggs, are safe to eat.

The government stopped short of asking all bird owners to bring their animals inside, a measure already in place in the east of England.

It said that keepers with more than 500 birds would need to restrict access for non-essential people on their sites. Workers would need to change clothing and footwear before entering bird enclosures and site vehicles would need to be cleaned and disinfected regularly to limit the risk of the disease spreading.

Avian influenza spreads naturally in wild birds. These can spread it to poultry and other captive birds when they migrate.

"Bird keepers have faced the largest ever outbreak of avian flu this year and with winter brings an even more increased risk to flocks as migratory birds return to the United Kingdom," the chief veterinary officers of England, Scotland and Wales said in a joint statement.

"Scrupulous biosecurity and hygiene measures is the best form of defence."

The Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has found 20 dead wild birds at its Langford Lake reserve, most of them Canada geese. They found two more today - this time swans.

Two of the carcasses have been taken away by a Defra team and are currently being tested for suspected avian flu.

Dave Turner, estates manager at the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, said he had stopped all fishing and river access at the reserve, as well as educational activities including pond-dipping. The trust was asking the public to stick to footpaths and not to walk through bird faeces.

"It's very hard with wild populations. You can't control where they come from," he said. "We have large numbers of Canada geese and lapwings and more, and you don't know what could be potentially coming and going from site."

He asked members of the public to "be vigilant" and to record any sightings by taking a photo and emailing it in with a location.

"From a wildlife perspective this is the worst we've ever seen," he said. "It could be a very long winter unfortunately."

New anti-bird flu rules as virus hits flocks in Lewis and Orkney


Mon, October 17, 2022

Hens

Bird flu has been confirmed in domestic flocks in Orkney and Lewis.

The Scottish government said the small flocks of fowl at Tankerness in Orkney and Great Bernera, Lewis, had been isolated.

Exclusion zones have been put in place in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus, which is fatal for birds.

The UK government has announced all bird keepers in England, Scotland and Wales must implement strict biosecurity measures to stop bird flu spreading.

The Department of Agriculture introduced the measure on Monday amid the country's largest ever outbreak of avian flu.

The chief veterinary officers from England, Scotland and Wales declared an Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (AIPZ) across Great Britain to prevent the disease spreading amongst poultry and captive birds.

They stopped short of asking all bird owners to bring their animals inside.

The risk to human health from the virus remains very low, the UK government said.

Scotland's chief vet Sheila Voas said it was disappointing to have to confirm the two Scottish cases of avian flu, adding it was a "horrible way" for birds to die.

The Orkney case involves a small "backyard" flock, while the Great Bernera one has been described as a small commercial unit.

Bird keepers have been urged to take measures to protect their flocks

In July, Scottish government agency NatureScot announced it was setting up a taskforce to respond to bird flu.

The move followed devastating outbreaks over the spring and summer among wild bird populations around Scotland's coast.

The main birds affected were gannets, skuas, geese and gulls.

Shetland was one of the worst affected areas, with carcasses also found from the Mull of Galloway to St Kilda and East Lothian.

'Scrupulous biosecurity'

The latest measures to tackle bird flu among domestic birds has seen keepers with more than 500 birds being asked to restrict access for non-essential people on their sites.

Workers would need to change clothing and footwear before entering bird enclosures and site vehicles would need to be cleaned and disinfected regularly to limit the risk of the disease spreading.

In a statement, the chief veterinary officers of England, Scotland and Wales said: "Bird keepers have faced the largest ever outbreak of avian flu this year and with winter brings an even more increased risk to flocks as migratory birds return to the United Kingdom.

"Scrupulous biosecurity and hygiene measures is the best form of defence."

The UK Health Security Agency advised that the risk to public health from the virus was very low and the Food Standards Agency advised that avian influenzas posed a very low food safety risk for consumers. It said properly cooked poultry and poultry products, including eggs, are safe to eat.

NFU Scotland said the announcement would likely see little change on poultry farms as producers had already been taking precautions due to the continued risk posed by the virus over summer.

But poultry policy manager Penny Middleton added: "Keepers, no matter how large their flock, should familiarise themselves with the requirements of the prevention zone, and the enhanced biosecurity guidance."

She said particular attention should be given to building maintenance, keeping birds away from ponds and disinfecting vehicles coming on to farms.

What to know about H5N1 bird flu in humans as a girl dies in Cambodia and her father tests positive

Catherine Schuster-Bruce
Fri, February 24, 2023 

A strain of bird flu, H5N1, can transmit between humans but it's rare.

Peter Garrard Beck/Getty Images

A girl has died in Cambodia from bird flu, health officials said.


The girl's dad is infected, but we don't know if he caught it from her.


Experts have said the risk of the virus spreading among people is low.

An 11-year-old girl has died in Cambodia from bird flu, health authorities in the country said.

The girl initially fell ill with a high fever and cough on February 16 and later died in the National Children's Hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city, on Wednesday, the authorities said, per Reuters.

The case comes amid an outbreak of bird flu that has lead to the deaths of more than 200 million birds worldwide since early 2022, either from disease or mass culls, the World Organisation for Animal Health told Reuters.

The bird flu strain "H5 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A" or "H5N1" has infected 868 people since it was first detected in humans in 1997, and 457 of those confirmed cases died, according to the World Health Organization. Officials in Cambodia said that the girl was the first human case in a Southeast Asian country since 2014, per Reuters.

Officials believe that the young girl caught the virus from dead wild birds or animals near her home in the Prey Veng province in south Cambodia, close to the border with Vietnam — 22 chickens and three ducks were found dead nearby, per The Telegraph.

Officials have taken samples from those birds as well as at least 12 people who came into contact with the girl, according to Reuters. As of Friday, the girl's father had tested positive for the virus, but we don't know how he caught it.

Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, UK, told the Science Media Centre on Friday that human infections are rare, and the likelihood of onward human to human transmission was "very low."

"There is always a risk of human infection, particularly in people in close contact with poultry or wild birds, and this risk increases during times where circulation of avian influenza is particularly high, as it is now," he said.
Humans don't usually catch bird flu, but it can be deadly

H5N1 causes fever, cough, and then can rapidly progress to respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome — a life-threatening condition when fluid builds up in the tiny air sacs in the lungs — and multi-organ failure, according to the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. It states that 50% of people who catch it die, but that figure can vary between countries.

James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge, UK, told the SMC that many people will have been exposed to H5N1 in recent years, but only a few had caught it.

"This one case in itself does not signal the global situation has suddenly changed," he said.

Ball said that the risk to humans is still "very low."

Experts, including Ball and Wood, told the SMC that H5N1 needs to be closely monitored, in part due to recent reports of it infecting mammals like sea lions in Peru.

"There are two ways H5N1 can change – the mutations it accumulates itself over a period of time, or the mutations it develops as it links with other species," David Heymann, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,UK, told The Telegraph.

But he cautioned that "no one can say the risk is low, high or intermediate," because a mutation or "spillover" from another species was an unpredictable, "chance event."

"By far the most likely scenario for H5N1 is that nothing happens right now," Francois Balloux, the director of the UCL Genetics Institute, UK, tweeted on Friday.

What is bird flu? 11-year-old girl in Cambodia dies from virus

Health agencies are modelling potential human-transmission scenarios for the H5N1 virus based on the Covid pandemic and the 1918 influenza outbreak

Harriet Sinclair
·Trending News Reporter
Fri, February 24, 2023 

Bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe in the most recent outbreak among poultry. (Reuters)

An 11-year-old girl has died from bird flu in Cambodia, after contracting the first known human case of the H5N1 virus in the country since 2014.

The girl became ill on 16 February and died on Wednesday, according to the country's health ministry. Her father has since been confirmed to have contracted the virus and 11 other people who came into contact with the child are being tested.

The case has put other countries on high alert for human cases of the virus, which has resulted in the deaths or culling of more than 200 million birds around the world.

Although the virus has spread rapidly among the UK's avian population, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said there is "no evidence so far that the virus is getting better at infecting humans or other mammals".


Girl, 11, dies in Cambodia after catching bird flu, government says (The Independent, 2-min read)
What is bird flu?

Avian influenza, otherwise known as bird flu, is categorised as influenza A H5N1. The virus has spread widely in birds around the world since 2021 but has thus far resulted in very few infections in humans.

According to the European Centre of Disease Control the virus is a "highly pathogenic avian influenza virus", meaning it has a high mortality rate among infected poultry.

The 2021/2022 epidemic has been among the worst recorded in Europe, and the UKHSA is currently looking into potential response scenarios should the virus begin to transmit to humans more widely.

The agency is currently assessing whether the lateral flow devices used to detect COVID could be used to test for the H5N1 virus in humans, and has been monitoring people who have come into contact with infected birds.

Arturo Casadevall, the chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins University in the US, which supplied widely used coronavirus tracking data, said information on whether the 12 suspected new infections in Cambodia would be key.



The UKHSA is currently modelling several different potential scenarios of human transmission - one based on the recent coronavirus pandemic, and one based on the 1918 flu outbreak, whose fatality rate was higher.

In a potential scenario with a higher fatality rate, people could see "significant behavioural differences relative to the recent pandemic experience", UKHSA said.

Dr Meera Chand, incident director for avian influenza at UKHSA, said: "The latest evidence suggests that the avian influenza viruses we’re seeing circulating in birds do not currently spread easily to people.

"However, viruses constantly evolve, and we remain vigilant for any evidence of changing risk to the population, as well as working with partners to address gaps in the scientific evidence."

Bird flu: Health officials draw up COVID-style model looking at pandemic possibilities (Sky News, 3-min read)

Bird flu situation 'worrying'; WHO working with Cambodia


Fri, February 24, 2023
By Jennifer Rigby

LONDON (Reuters) -The World Health Organization is working with Cambodian authorities after two confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu were found among one family in the country.

Describing the situation as "worrying" due to the recent rise in cases in birds and mammals, Dr Sylvie Briand, the director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, told reporters in a virtual briefing that WHO was reviewing its global risk assessment in light of the recent developments.

The U.N. health agency last assessed the risk to humans from avian flu as low earlier this month.

Cambodian authorities on Thursday reported the death of an 11-year old girl due to H5N1, and began testing 12 of her contacts. Her father, who had been showing symptoms, has also tested positive for the virus.

"The global H5N1 situation is worrying given the wide spread of the virus in birds around the world and the increasing reports of cases in mammals including humans," Briand said. "WHO takes the risk from this virus seriously and urges heightened vigilance from all countries."

Briand said it was not yet clear whether there had been any human-to-human transmission, which was a key reason to focus on the cases in Cambodia, or if the two cases were due to the "same environmental conditions," likely close contact with infected birds or other animals.

A new strain of H5N1, clade 2.3.4.4b, emerged in 2020 and has been causing record numbers of deaths among wild birds and domestic poultry in recent months. It has also infected mammals, raising global concerns.

However, unlike earlier outbreaks of H5N1, which has been around for more than two decades, this subtype is not causing significant illness in people. So far, only about a half dozen cases have been reported to the WHO in people who had close contact with infected birds, and most of those have been mild. Experts have suggested that the virus might need to change in order for human transmission to occur.

However, WHO said it was stepping up preparedness efforts regardless, and noted that there were antivirals available, as well as 20 licensed pandemic vaccines if the situation changes, although they would have to be updated to more closely match the circulating strain of H5N1 if needed.

That could take four to five months, said Richard Webby, director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds at St. Jude Children's Hospital. However, some stockpiled vaccines would be available in the meantime.

WHO-affiliated labs already hold two flu virus strains that are closely related to the circulating H5N1 virus, which manufacturers can use to develop new shots if needed. A global meeting of flu experts this week suggested developing another strain that more closely matches H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, Webby told the briefing.

(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby; editing by Jon Boyle, Jason Neely and Tomasz Janowski)

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BIRD FLU 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for H5N1