Bird Flu News:

• We’ve passed 1,000 dairy herds infected with H5N1 since March of last year, with 4 new herd infections this week in CA and ID. (CIDRAP)
• Ahead of Easter, bird flu experts recommend cooking eggs before consuming them - and it’s a safe bet to hard boil them before dyeing eggs with kids... (Fox)
• …if you can afford eggs at all, which reached a whopping $6.23 per dozen on average last month. The drop in wholesale prices has not yet made it to consumers, who may stick to the plastic variety this Easter. (AP)

Measles News:

• A 31-year-old unvaccinated man in Mexico died from measles that was linked to the Texas outbreak. (Esuero)
• Some officials in the Panhandle outbreak have switched to a harm-reduction approach after low vaccine uptake in the area, asking families to stay home to stop the spread of measles if they are unwilling to get vaccinated. (NPR)
• The TX measles outbreak didn’t just come out of the blue - it came after years of insufficient funding for vaccine clinics in the area. (AP)
• El Paso, TX confirmed 3 new cases for a total of 8 in the area. (KTSM)

Health News:

• CDC’s vaccine advisory panel is meeting this week after months of delays. Experts are watching closely to see if there are any major process changes. (NPR)
• Flu season is officially over, though numbers remain moderate in the Northeast. (YLE)
• Kansas passed a law restricting public health officials’ authority amid major TB and measles outbreaks there. They’ll no longer be able to impose quarantines, among other measures to stop the spread of contagious diseases. (Kansas City Star)
• More than 3 million child deaths worldwide in 2022 could be linked to antimicrobial resistance. (CIDRAP)
• A CDC lab for testing viral hepatitis was closed on April 1, which may impact the ability to pinpoint outbreaks. (STAT)
• Deportation fears are adding to the mental health problems faced by Colorado resort town workers, who already have higher rates of substance use disorder and suicide, in part due to seasonal fluctuations in income. (KFF Health News)

Best Questions:

Does the U.S. actually wash chicken in chlorine – and should we be worried?

You might’ve heard the term “chlorinated chicken” tossed around in the news recently, especially when the U.S. butts heads with Europe and the U.K. on food imports. Yes, the U.S. really did rinse chicken in a chlorine solution for many years to eliminate pathogens, a practice that was banned in the ‘90s in Europe. But less than 5% of U.S. chicken is bathed in a chlorine solution now. Instead, most processing plants use a cold water bath with a mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, which kills bacteria and extends the shelf life of raw chicken.

And in fact, even the European Union recognizes that this practice of disinfecting chicken is not a threat to human health, even with chlorine solutions. In fact, they worried that it might mask unsanitary conditions during processing. Europe has an approach that tends to prioritize animal sanitation while they’re alive, with vaccination and food additives, while the U.S. tends to focus on disinfection during food processing. That said, there’s very little evidence to show that Europe’s model is safer or causes fewer cases of foodborne illness than the U.S. Ultimately, it's less about science and more about different food and public health philosophies in the two regions.

No matter what, don’t try washing raw chicken at home. That’s a surefire way to spread bacteria, like Salmonella. Instead, make sure your chicken gets up to temp at 165 °F to eliminate nasty pathogens.

Sources: NPR, Independent

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What is going on with bird flu right now? I haven’t heard much in recent weeks?

News pieces on bird flu are suddenly few and far between. The news is overshadowed in the media by the chaos happening at the federal level with layoffs and funding cuts. It’s also being squeezed out by the rapidly growing measles outbreak, which is more urgent for most Americans. And let’s face it - it’s hard to ask people to care about something that could turn into a human pandemic at any moment, but hasn’t yet, nor has it done so in the past 25+ years of infecting humans.

But it is still an emerging health threat, and it didn’t just magically disappear from commercial poultry flocks and dairy cattle, though numbers have seemed to have improved over the past few months. It’s much harder to get a sense for what’s going on because many of the folks at the FDA who worked on bird flu, including multiple senior veterinarians, were fired as part of the mass reduction in workforce at HHS. Another victim of cuts: a major project set to launch this month to compare test results across 40 different labs to make sure H5N1 testing was reliable.

New detections have slowed way down in the U.S. in birds. Over 23 million commercial and backyard birds died in January, down to just 2.1 million reported in March. Wholesale egg prices have also dropped, though those aren’t all getting passed on to the consumer just yet. As the weather warms, some experts worry that birds migrating north will drive up cases in the Northern hemisphere, so we’re not out of the woods yet.

In short, bird flu is looking better than it has in a few years, but we’re not sure if that will hold, and we’re not sure how much is going undetected, especially as funding cuts affect so many surveillance and prevention programs. We’ll continue to keep a close eye on it, and as always, are watching for any cases of human-to-human transmission, which hasn’t happened yet.

Sources: Sensitive & Specific, KFF Health News, CBS, Reuters, APHIS

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Best Read:

As the hit show The Last of Us returns for a second season of fungal pandemic mayhem, we’re dusting off this great piece from Your Local Epidemiologist’s Katelyn Jetelina and Cassandra Quave about the likelihood of a pandemic caused by…mushrooms.

The Last of Us: Perspectives from an epidemiologist and a plant scientist - YLE

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