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Bird flu is back at the top of the news. Leading the headlines is a story about a Canadian teenager who was healthy before contracting H5N1 and is now in critical condition, too sick to answer questions about how they might have been infected. It’s devastating for that teen and their family, though the pandemic risk remains low.
This person has the variant that’s found in wild birds, not dairy cows. There’s no evidence of human-to-human transmission at all, and while it’s the first locally-acquired bird flu in Canada, it’s not uncommon globally for humans to be infected from wild birds and then have severe illness. Some level of spread to humans is an expected outcome of the massive outbreak happening among wild birds and mammals, but one-off cases like this one don’t significantly raise the risk of spread between humans.
We’re certainly keeping an eye on it, especially as flu has started to rise nationally, which adds an element of risk in case a person (or pig, or even cow) is infected with a human virus and H5N1, which could then swap genes and create a new version that can spread more easily between humans. But again, this virus has had ample opportunity over decades and has never yet started to spread between people. That doesn’t mean a single reassortment event can’t change that, but the fact that it hasn’t happened yet means that we’re not panicking.
Head lice seems to be everywhere right now - we’ve gotten dozens of questions about them over the past few months from clients across industries. They spread relatively easily, often via kids at school and then through individual households. But lice are a nuisance, not a health threat because they don’t carry diseases. There are plenty of misconceptions about them, but they don’t mean that someone is dirty (there’s actually some evidence that they prefer clean hair). Anecdotally, there are reports around the world of more lice right now, and some think there’s an unexpected culprit: selfies. When people touch their heads together to take a picture, lice (who only crawl and don’t jump) can make their way from one person to another. That said, they’re relatively hard to spread in the workplace as long as you’re not sharing hats or hairnets - or taking too many selfies.
If an employee has head lice, send them home to dry clean their clothing, vacuum their furniture, and clean their hair brushes and combs in hot water. Then, they can take over-the-counter treatment (usually a medicated shampoo and a special brush to remove the nits and lice). Once they’ve completed a treatment, they can return to work 24 hours later. At work, you should wash aprons, hair nets, or other reusable items in hot water before the employee returns.
Sources: ZHH Head Lice Action Plan, CDC, Washington Post