A couple of days ago, there was a ProMed request for information following a report of a large number of dead cats in Poland. The cats were reported to have had respiratory and neurological disease, so my thought process went to “that fits with avian flu spillover,” then “but that large
Avian Influenza in Mink: Should We Care?
The ongoing H5N1 avian influenza outbreak is an unprecedented event in its size, scope and duration (but it’s not getting much press anymore these days). As infections continue to occur is birds in large numbers over a vast geographic range, we worry about spillover events into other species.
There have now been many reports of
US Canine Influenza Outbreaks and Vaccination Decisions
As canine flu causes another (and particularly impressive) round of outbreaks in the US, a lot of questions arise. A big one involves vaccination.
I won’t go over the whole “what is canine flu?” spiel in this post, but I’ll give a quick overview of why we care about it. It’s a highly
Canine Pneumovirus Outbreaks: Important or Not? (Plus a Link to Antimicrobial Stewardship)
I’m focusing on antimicrobials this week since it’s World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, but this is a timely topic and there’s an antimicrobial twist.
A couple of recent reports about a canine pneumovirus outbreak in a shelter in Tacoma WA and a separate outbreak of canine pneumovirus in a shelter in Las Vegas NV have,
Update: Michigan Dog Disease
We already have an update on the Michigan dog disease outbreak that I wrote about yesterday which has attracted a lot of attention.
An update (August 24) from the Michigan State Veterinarian indicates this appears to be an outbreak of parvovirus. I’m not overly surprised. As I wrote yesterday:
An outbreak of our typical canine
Outbreak of Fatal Disease in Michigan Dogs? What Is It, Is It Real and What Do We Know?
I
’ve been holding off writing about this, hoping for more details, but my inbox has been flooded with questions about it so I figured I’d get the ball rolling. There’s been a bit of a media frenzy about an apparent outbreak of severe disease in dogs in northern Michigan.
What do we know?
Canine Pneumovirus in an Animal Shelter
We’ve come a long way in terms of medical diagnostic technology in recent years. It’s now cheap and easy to identify a wide range of viruses and bacteria, including some we’ve never seen before. However, our ability to find pathogens has outpaced our ability to understand the role they may (or may not) play in
Canine Influenza in the News: US
Canine influenza is back in the news in the US, with close to 50 dogs infected with canine influenza at a dog rescue in Florida. The outbreak has been going on for over two weeks already. This is a “surprising but not surprising” scenario to me.
It’s a bit surprising because canine flu activity
New Feline Virus: Fechavirus
As SARS-CoV-2 reminded everyone, there are lots of undiscovered viruses out there, and some of them can cause disease in humans, animals, or both. It’s not very hard to find a new virus, actually. Figuring out what it means is often the challenge, because simply finding a virus in a sick person or animal doesn’t
Novel coronavirus and wildlife markets
While the whole story hasn’t been sorted out, it seems pretty clear that one or more animal species at the Wuhan Seafood Market (which sold much more than just aquatic animals and their products) was the source of the novel coronavirus. Just like SARS.
Once again, this has raised concerns about markets where diverse live