Scientists warn of the elevated risks of a brand new hen flu pressure : NPR

The unfold of hen flu continues to bother scientists. They are saying there isn’t any indication that the U.S. has the outbreak beneath management. And now, a extra regarding model of the virus has cropped up.



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It was roughly a 12 months in the past that scientists consider hen flu first jumped into dairy cattle within the Texas Panhandle. Greater than 600 herds have been contaminated since then in additional than a dozen states, and as NPR’s Will Stone reviews, scientists are involved.

WILL STONE, BYLINE: For a time, Dr. Juergen Richt was optimistic the outbreak could possibly be contained. His experiments with contaminated cattle indicated hen flu was primarily spreading by virus-laden milk, not as you’d anticipate from a typical respiratory virus.

JUERGEN RICHT: And I stated, that is excellent news as a result of it is not respiratory droplet transmitted.

STONE: Richt is a veterinary microbiologist at Kansas State College.

RICHT: We went out and stated that is necessary for the trade to know. Management your milk contamination, perhaps you possibly can management the outbreak. It did not occur, apparently.

STONE: The intervening months have made it painfully clear hen flu has a robust foothold within the nation’s dairy provide. Not solely that, it continues to comb by massive poultry operations, and it is nonetheless circulating in wild birds.

RICHT: This virus just isn’t simple to do away with. We should reside with it.

STONE: For one, there are just too some ways for the virus to unfold in and round dairy farms. Gregory Grey is an epidemiologist on the College of Texas Medical Department.

GREGORY GRAY: In need of an enormous vaccine program within the cattle, I simply do not see how we will management it.

STONE: And so long as it is spreading in livestock and poultry, individuals working with these animals are at particularly excessive danger. Up to now, there are greater than 50 identified human infections within the U.S., however the true quantity could possibly be larger. For instance, one examine examined dairy employees in Michigan and Colorado who’d been at farms with outbreaks in cattle. About 7% of the individuals had proof of a previous an infection.

GRAY: It is fairly clear, we’re lacking most likely loads of circumstances of H5N1 infections.

DEBORAH BIRX: We’re making the identical errors we made with COVID.

STONE: That is Dr. Deborah Birx. She helped oversee the pandemic response through the first Trump administration and is now a fellow on the Bush Institute. With out rather more testing of cattle and folks, she says there is no technique to know the extent of the outbreak.

BIRX: Crucial factor is to trace the place it’s. And what have we discovered over the past 5 years? Properly, loads of viruses unfold asymptomatically.

STONE: What’s been reassuring up to now is that there is no compelling proof the virus is spreading between individuals and that the human infections have largely been delicate. An exception to that could be a latest case in British Columbia. There, a youngster stays in crucial situation. It is not clear how they caught the virus. Louise Moncla, a virologist on the College of Pennsylvania, says genetic sequencing signifies it got here from wild birds, not cattle. However what’s troubling is the virus seems to have advanced whereas within the teenager. It acquired mutations that may assist the protein on the floor of the virus extra simply infect people.

LOUISE MONCLA: What this case in British Columbia reveals us is that flu is all the time going to shock us. It is vitally laborious to foretell which viruses are going to contaminate individuals and the way they may change after they do.

STONE: Canadian well being officers say it is doable these adjustments permit the virus to bind to receptors deep within the lungs and led to a extra extreme sickness. There is no indication {the teenager} unfold the virus to others. However scientists like Moncla are uneasy as flu season arrives. If a human have been to catch hen flu and seasonal influenza on the similar time, the 2 viruses may endure a genetic mixing often called reassortment, and that might spawn a brand new, extra harmful virus.

MONCLA: Each previous pandemic virus that we have had has been a reassortment occasion between a virus circulating in people and a virus circulating in a unique species. However translating that right into a chance that we’re near a pandemic or {that a} pandemic will occur now…

STONE: That, she says, is unimaginable to foretell.

Will Stone, NPR Information.

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