Bird Flu News:

• A Michigan egg producer laid off 400 employees amid an avian flu outbreak. (CBS)
• 3 more dairy herds in Michigan are also infected. (Michigan.gov)
• 2 domestic cats, who don’t appear to be linked to dairy or poultry farms, tested positive for H5N1 in South Dakota. (CIDRAP)
• CDC published an update on its response to H5N1, with increased flu surveillance this summer (including wastewater testing and response) and starting a new pandemic risk assessment. (CDC)
• Store-bought milk can be used to track H5N1, scientists find. (STAT)

Health News:

• An outbreak of cryptosporidiosis in the UK has risen to 45+ confirmed cases with over 100 more reporting symptoms. (Guardian)
• A case of Hepatitis A has been identified in a grocery store worker in LA. (NBC)
• CDC issued an alert over meningitis cases in Saudi Arabia, urging vaccination for anyone going on pilgrimage there. (CDC)
• A drug-resistant fungus is becoming an issue in the U.S., with a 9 of 11 cases this year in travelers who returned from Bangladesh. (CIDRAP)
• Add mosquitos to the list of issues that Houston is facing, with the combination of flooding and warm weather creating a breeding ground. (Washington Post)
• The mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a different, deadlier clade than the one from the outbreak in 2022, and poses a global threat. (MMWR)
  

Mental Health & Substance Use News:

• 2 years in, the 988 hotline has helped 10 million people in the U.S. (Boston Globe)
• 73% of workers say their organization cares about employee mental health, but a whopping 39% think they only pretend to care because it’s trendy. (SHRM)
• 321,566 children in the US lost a parent to a drug overdose from 2011 to 2021. (JAMA)

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or need help, call 988 or message the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

Best Questions:

What does it mean that 2 domestic cats in South Dakota are sick with bird flu? Should I be worried?

It’s interesting but not particularly alarming to hear that two domestic cats tested positive for H5N1 and that they didn’t appear to have any links to poultry or dairy farms. A few months ago, we heard about cats and H5N1 after a full half of the cats died on two dairy farms with infected cows, likely after drinking raw milk from sick cows. But we’re not particularly worried about this right now because domestic cats are known to kill wild birds. Outdoor cats kill billions of wild birds per year in the U.S., so it’s quite possible that these cats came into contact with infected wild birds. Domestic cats are often a vector for viruses spreading from the animal world to humans - you’ll recall articles earlier this year on bubonic plague and Alaskapox, each spread to a human by their pet cat who came into contact with an infected wild animal. Right now, we don’t see cause for alarm, but if you do have a pet cat that hunts wild animals when outdoors, consider keeping them indoors to reduce risk.

Sources: CBS, Nature, Alaska.gov, CNN

We heard that cooking beef to “well done” kills H5N1, but does that mean medium-rare burgers are unsafe?

This is a question that we immediately looked into, in which the headline led us to more questions than answers. First and foremost, we don’t have any evidence that there’s any bird flu in our ground beef supply at all. But we do know that dairy cattle sometimes end up in ground beef, so there’s some concern that it could end up in the supply eventually. The USDA regularly inspects retail meat and hasn't found H5N1 in any grocery store samples, so that’s good news. The headlines about cooking beef patties fully to kill bird flu virus are from a recent USDA experiment. They inoculated patties with a surrogate of the H5N1 virus and cooked them to different internal temps. Medium (145°F) and well-done patties (160°F) killed off the virus, while rare patties still had some virus present, though at much lower levels. Overall, this doesn’t mean that you should stop serving or eating medium-rare burgers right now. It just means that if there were to be evidence of the virus in meat supplies, it could be important to cook meat to at least 145°F and ideally 160°F to reduce risk to humans or at least to warn customers of that risk.

Sources: CIDRAP, Food Safety

Best Read:

The Disease Detectives Trying to Keep the World Safe From Bird Flu - The New York Times

‍