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As the United States battles new strains of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1, AKA bird flu, the State of Mississippi has now reported the first outbreak since 2017 of the deadly H7N9 bird flu on a poultry farm. The H7N9 bird flu virus has killed 39% of the 1,568 people infected worldwide since it was first detected in 2013, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Reuters reports that the outbreak of H7N9 in the United States was detected on a farm of 47,654 commercial broiler breeder chickens in Noxubee, Mississippi. While the WHO has said that both forms of the bird flu virus do not appear to transmit easily from person to person, a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned bird flu may actually be spreading in humans.
That bird flu study was supposed to be made public weeks ago, but was withheld because President Donald Trump halted all external communications by federal health agencies. Now, the U.S. response to bird flu has reportedly been resumed and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says it will spend $1 billion in attempt to limit the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, New Scientist reports H5N1 bird flu has been found in dead birds on Antarctica for the first time. It is currently spreading south along the Antarctic Peninsula and could spread across the continent. If that occurs, it would devastate penguin and other seabird populations.
In another report published over the weekend, a H5N1 bird flu mutation associated with increased infectiousness and disease severity was found in two cats. The Los Angeles Times reports that the mutation is similar to the one found in dairy cows last week, but has a slightly different origin.
Earlier this month, experts from the Harvard Medical School-led Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness were asked “On a scale from one to ten, how worried are you about H5N1 becoming a major pandemic?”
“As infectious disease doctors and public health professionals, we worry all the time, but I think we’re in the four to five range right now,” said Robert Goldstein, Massachusetts Department of Public Health Commissioner.
“I would increase those numbers a little bit,” said Jeremy Luban, professor of molecular medicine, biochemistry & molecular biotechnology at UMass Chan Medical School.
“I’d put it at a five,” replied Kathryn Stephenson, HMS associate professor of medicine and infectious disease expert at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
“I’m probably at a six, but I’ve come up from a two or three in a fairly short time period,” Jonathan Runstadler, professor and chair, department of Infectious Disease and Global Health, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, revealed.
I would put it at a six or a seven,” replied Jacob Lemieux, HMS assistant professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Last year, Robert Redfield, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), warned, “I really do think it’s very likely that we will at some time, it’s not a question of if, it’s more a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic.”