Bird Flu News:

• Avian flu may spread via the wind, though it’s very difficult to prove definitively. (CIDRAP)
• Egg prices are up past a record $8.00 per dozen. (USDA)
• Nearly 19 million birds have been affected in the U.S. over the past 30 days. (APHIS)
• An “exceptionally rare” mutation that makes H5N1 resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu was found on eight chicken farms in Canada. (CIDRAP)
• A recent study found plenty of viral RNA in dairy products but no live virus in any samples, indicating that pasteurization is very effective at inactivating H5N1. (Journal of Food Protection)
  

Health News:

• The West Texas measles outbreak has grown again, from 90 cases on Friday to 124 on Tuesday, the large majority in children. Nearby Lea County, NM has held steady with 9 cases as of Tuesday. (TX DSHS, NM Health)
• A patient infected with measles may have exposed people at two universities in Texas, as well as popular tourist destinations in San Antonio. (CIDRAP)
• In addition to the West TX and NM outbreak, individual measles cases have cropped up in NYC, RI, and AK, and there’s an outbreak of 3 cases in NJ. (YLE)
• Flu is finally showing signs of letting up. Cases are still higher than most previous season’s highs but are trending down. (YLE)
• Norovirus is still extremely high, with a 22.2% test positivity rate and a hotspot in the Midwest. (Force of Infection)
• The FDA is investigating a Listeria outbreak caused by frozen supplemental shakes from Lyons and Sysco that were sold to long-term care facilities. 12 deaths have been reported. (FDA)
• The death toll for two unknown illness clusters in the DR Congo has risen to 53, with a significant portion dying within 48 hours of symptom onset. Testing ruled out Ebola or Marburg, but hasn’t ID’d a pathogen yet. (Washington Post)
• The FDA reinstated food staffers, among others, who were previously let go in government-wide layoffs. (NY Times)
• A new outbreak of Salmonella Newport with 27 cases is being investigated with no known source yet. (FDA)
• U.S. officials from the CDC and FDA joined the WHO-led flu planning meeting despite a planned withdrawal from the agency at the end of the year. (STAT)

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Mental Health & Substance Use News:

• 10% of federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) staff were fired, including staff working on the 988 hotline. (CBS)
• A new study found that when people blocked the internet from their smartphones for two weeks, they had better mental health and longer attention spans.
  (NPR)

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or need help, call or text 988.

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Best Questions:

What do we know about this new bat virus in China?

Scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (yes, that Wuhan lab) have identified a new bat coronavirus, HKU5-CoV-2. It’s in the same family as MERS and distantly related to COVID, with lab-based evidence suggesting it could bind to human cells—but no human cases have been detected.

Right now, the pandemic risk from this virus is very low. We don’t know how common it is in bats or if people have been exposed before. While humans have frequent contact with bats, actual spillover events are rare. A 2021 study estimated that 60,000 people in Southeast Asia are infected with bat coronaviruses annually, yet few lead to outbreaks and even fewer to pandemics.

Despite the lab's ties to the unproven COVID lab-leak controversy, scientists aren’t questioning the validity of this research—though some debate whether studying novel viruses is worth the risk. That said, researchers have already started to identify treatments that would be effective against this virus in case it were to make the leap to humans.

The bottom line is that we’ve identified a new version of a familiar family of viruses that lives in bats, but there’s no evidence that it has infected humans, and it doesn’t raise our pandemic risk right now.

Sources: Bloomberg, Nature, Reuters

Could aged raw milk cheeses spread H5N1?

A recent study found plenty of viral RNA in dairy products but no live virus in any samples, adding to the growing evidence that pasteurization inactivates H5N1. Of 23 samples of unpasteurized (raw) aged cheese, none had viral RNA particles or live samples. In the U.S., raw milk cheeses must be aged at least 60 days to be sold in interstate commerce, so this study only looked at cheeses aged that much. That doesn’t mean that aged raw milk cheese is immune to the virus - just that none of the cheeses were made from the milk of infected cows. Because none of the samples had virus in them, the FDA couldn’t actually draw any conclusions about whether the current 60-day aging requirements are enough to inactivate H5N1. Instead, the FDA launched a sampling program to test raw cow’s milk cheeses for H5N1 and expects to collect 300 samples by March. We’re looking forward to hearing about those results. Right now, there have been no reported human cases of H5N1 caused by raw cow’s milk cheeses.

Sources: Journal of Food Protection, FDA, Food Safety Magazine

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Best Listen:

We recently discovered the podcast Why Should I Trust You? It’s two journalists, a virologist and a dermatologist, who dig into the nation’s mistrust of science and public health. In this episode, they talk to two Georgia moms who don’t trust the measles vaccine or big pharma in general and an immunization expert who has invented a childhood vaccine - all to discuss the reality of measles, the risks, and why one episode of the Brady Bunch might have set back measles vaccination for a generation…

Measles, Pharma and Mistrust: A Conversation with MAHA Moms and Dr. Paul Offit from Why Should I Trust You?