This week US officials reported a case of H5N1 influenza in a pig in the Oregon. While it’s certainly a noteworthy finding, as is unfortunately now typical, a lot of the social media buzz is overblown. This is a concerning situation that we need to watch, and yet another indicator that we need to continue
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a big problem with a crappy marketing plan. It’s been termed a “silent pandemic,” and it has huge health and financial impacts that are only going to get worse if we don’t act. Unfortunately, even though we’ve been battling this issue for decades, the average person doesn’t know about it, or
Bats are getting a lot of attention around here following the recent death of a person in Ontario from rabies. The infection was “suspected to have been acquired from direct contact with a bat…” Most rabies deaths that occur in North America nowadays are due to transmission from bats, but all too often
I know seals are mammals.
I know rabies virus can infect all mammals.
I’m pretty tuned into rabies and rabies prevention.
Yet, I’m not sure how quickly I’d clue in to any rabies risk from a seal bite. (I’d hopefully get there eventually, but I doubt it would jump to mind like it would with
There’s a great new early-release paper in Emerging Infectious Diseases (Oguzie et al. 2024) about the emerging situation with H5N1 influenza in dairy cattle. It provides some important new information, and more details that somewhat challenge the early narrative.
The authors explain some of the limitations of the study to keep in
When an unvaccinated person is exposed to rabies, they typically receive post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) consisting of a dose of anti-rabies antibodies and four (4) rabies vaccines over the course of two weeks. In dogs and cats, it’s a different story. We don’t use formal PEP protocols in pets in most regions.
For such a potentially big problem, we’re received disappointingly little official information about H5N1 influenza on dairy farms in the US. The more we know, the better we can plan for containment and control, wherever it pops up next. If information isn’t being gathered or isn’t being shared, our ability to address this problem
We know a lot more about the situation with H5N1 influenza in dairy cattle than we did a couple of weeks ago, thanks to ongoing research and (more importantly) better disclosure of information that has been held pretty tight up until now.
Current situation with infected dairy herds in the US
Rather than focus
Dairy cows produce a lot of milk. That’s great when you’re producing it for sale. It’s not great when you have to get rid of it.
It’s clear that this H5N1 flu virus has an affinity for the udder, and a lot of virus is shed in the milk of infected dairy cattle. It
As H5N1 avian flu continues to infect dairy cattle in the US, and because we still don’t really understand some important aspects of how it’s being spread on and between dairy farms, questions keep coming up about the risk of transmission of this strain of the virus from milk.
