US poultry producers are tightening safety measures for their flocks as disease experts warn that wild birds are likely spreading a highly lethal form of avian flu across the country.
Indiana on Wednesday reported highly pathogenic bird flu on a commercial turkey farm, leading China, South Korea and Mexico to ban poultry imports from the state. The outbreak put the US industry on edge at a time that labor shortages are fueling food inflation.
The disease is already widespread in Europe and affecting Africa, Asia and Canada, but the outbreak in Indiana, which is on a migratory bird pathway, particularly rattled U.S. producers. A devastating US bird-flu outbreak in 2015 killed nearly 50 million birds, mostly turkeys and egg-laying chickens in the Midwest.
The United States is the world’s largest producer and second-largest exporter of poultry meat, according to the U.S. government.
“Everyone is just sitting on edge because we know what can happen and we don’t want a repeat of that,” said Denise Heard, vice president of research for the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, an industry group.
Poultry company Perdue suspended in-person visits to farms to avoid spreading the disease, spokeswoman Diana Souder said.
The disease is already widespread in Europe and affecting Canada, Africa and Asia, like here in Israel where chicken eggs were being thrown away at a quarantined farm,
Iowa’s Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig said a confirmed case in the country meant heightened risk for all.
“It’s time to move to a higher alert for our livestock producers,” Naig said.
Disease experts said a wild bird likely spread the H5N1 virus, which can be transmitted to humans, to Indiana from the East Coast, where officials have confirmed that wild ducks were infected with the strain.
The U.S. Agriculture Department called the disease low risk to people.
What US poultry producers are doing to safeguard against bird flu
Tyson Foods Inc heightened biosecurity measures in its East Coast facilities after the wild bird infections, the company said on an earnings call on Monday. It said it reduced the number of trips to farms and started taking more time to clean vehicles.
Perdue chicken said it has suspended in-person visits to farms to avoid spreading the disease.
Wild birds from the East Coast may have mixed with those that fly through a migratory path called the Mississippi Flyway that includes Indiana and major poultry-producing states, such as Mississippi and Alabama, experts said.
To better track the disease, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Friday it will expand monitoring of wild birds to the Mississippi Flyway and another migratory pathway, the Central Flyway, that includes Texas and Nebraska.
“It’s very likely that it can be all over the states – from the East Coast to the West Coast,” Heard said.
Tyson Foods said it has heightened biosecurity measures in its East Coast facilities and reduced the number of trips to farms.
Other commercial poultry flocks may become infected as wild birds traverse flyways, though producers have improved safety measures since 2015, said Carol Cardona, an avian health professor at the University of Minnesota.
In one key change, farms often require people who enter poultry barns to change their boots and clothing so they do not bring in contaminated materials like feces or feathers.
“We recognize that the virus could be right outside the door,” Cardona said.
There have been more than 700 outbreaks of bird flu in Europe.
There have been more than 700 outbreaks of bird flu in Europe, with more than 20 countries affected since October 2021. Tens of millions of birds have been culled.
Britain’s government reported that the country was suffering its worst-ever bird flu season, while Italy has the highest number of outbreaks at more than 300. Hungary, Poland and France have also recorded significant numbers of cases.
The disease hit the United States at a time when poultry supplies are down due to strong demand and labor shortages at meat plants during to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Government data showed U.S. frozen chicken supplies were down 14% from a year ago at the end of December while turkey inventories were down 23%.
Federal authorities are planning to increase its monitoring of wild, migratory birds to better track bird flu, which can be spread from wild birds to livestock.
In Indiana, officials are testing poultry farms in a 10-kilometer control area around the infected farm in Dubois County. The state said on Thursday that all tests were negative but that testing will continue on a weekly basis.
Those negative tests have not relaxed James Watson, the state veterinarian in Mississippi, the fifth-biggest chicken-meat-producing state. He said wild ducks will likely continue to spread the virus until warmer weather sends them to northern breeding grounds.
“Even if they resolve this with no other issues, we’re still going to be on high alert,” Watson said.
Chicken is pictured at a market on Granville Island is on Vancouver, Friday, Jan. 23, 2015. File photo by The Canadian Press/Jonathan HaywardListen to article
Canada’s food safety watchdog says the discovery of avian influenza in a commercial poultry flock in Nova Scotia has resulted in international trade restrictions on some Canadian poultry products.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says the outbreak of high pathogenic H5N1 was reported last week to the World Organization for Animal Health.
The agency says in a news release on Wednesday that the detection has resulted in Canada’s animal health status being changed to say it is not free from avian influenza.
GET TOP STORIES IN YOUR INBOX.
Email *
South Korea and the Philippines have imposed restrictions on poultry products from all of Canada including live poultry, poultry meat and edible eggs.
The United States, European Union, Taiwan, Mexico, Japan and Hong Kong have imposed restrictions on some products from Nova Scotia, or from the specific area of the province affected by the bird flu outbreak.
Russia has imposed restrictions on poultry from both Nova Scotia and on Newfoundland and Labrador, where bird flu was also detected in January and December.
The CFIA has not specified the type of birds affected by the pathogen in the Nova Scotia flock.
The agency has said that avian influenza circulates naturally in birds and can affect food-producing birds including chickens, turkeys, quails, and guinea fowl, as well as pet and wild birds.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza can cause severe illness and death in birds.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 9, 2022
Micrograph of avian influenza, also known as bird flu (Credit: CDC/F.A. Murphy)
Two more people in mainland China have tested positive for H5N6 bird flu, raising the number of cases reported this month to eight, officials say. A recent spike in human cases has led to calls for increased surveillance.
The first case, a 68-year-old man from Langzhong in Sichuan province, fell ill on January 3 and was taken to a local hospital the next day, where he remains in critical condition. There was no word on how he may have been infected.
The second case, a 55-year-old woman from Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, fell ill on January 6 after exposure to slaughtered poultry. She was admitted to an area hospital on January 9 and remains in critical condition.
Only 67 people have been infected with H5N6 bird flu since the first confirmed case in 2014, but more than half of them were reported during the past 6 months. Eight cases, including two deaths, have been reported so far this year.
H5N6 bird flu is known to cause severe illness in humans of all ages and has killed nearly half of those infected, according to WHO. There are no confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission but a woman who tested positive last year denied having contact with live poultry.
“The increasing trend of human infection with avian influenza virus has become an important public health issue that cannot be ignored,” researchers said in a study published by China’s Center for Disease Control in September. The study highlighted several mutations in two recent cases of H5N6 bird flu.
Thijs Kuiken, professor of comparative pathology at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, expressed concern about the rising number of cases. “It could be that this variant is a little more infectious (to people) … or there could be more of this virus in poultry at the moment and that’s why more people are getting infected,” Kuiken told Reuters in October.
Earlier that month, a WHO spokesperson said the risk of human-to-human transmission remained low because H5N6 has not acquired the ability for sustained transmission between humans. However, the spokesperson added that increased surveillance was “urgently required” to better understand the rising number of human cases.
The fast-moving pathogen, which has already invaded Europe, was found in East Coast ducks. The last outbreak that tore through the US killed 50 million birds.
IN THE FIRST days of the new year, on the marshy coastal edge of South Carolina’s Lowcountry, a hunter shot an American widgeon, a rusty-fronted duck with a pale beak and a brilliant green stripe. This was not a big deal; the state’s duck hunting season runs from Thanksgiving through the end of January. Neither was what happened next: Before taking it home, the hunter let a wildlife biologist affiliated with a government program swab the carcass for lab analysis.
But what happened after that was a big deal indeed. After the sample went through its routine check at Clemson University, it made an unusual second stop at a federal lab halfway across the country, in Iowa. The news of what was in the sample percolated through a pyramid of agencies, and on January 14 the US Department of Agriculture revealed why it had attracted so much scrutiny: The South Carolina duck was carrying the Asian strain of H5N1 avian influenza, the first sighting of that pathogen in the continental US in years.
But not the last. Just a few days later, the USDA disclosed that two more birds shot by hunters also carried the same pathogen: a teal, shot in the same South Carolina county, and a northern shoveler shot in the far northeast corner of North Carolina, about 400 miles away. The virus in all three was what is known as highly pathogenic—meaning it could cause fast-moving, fatal disease in other bird species, such as poultry, though it was not making the ducks ill.
Three birds out of the millions that American hunters shoot each year might seem like nothing—but the findings have sent a ripple of disquiet through the community of scientists who monitor animal diseases. In 2015, that same strain of flu landed in the Midwest’s turkey industry and caused the largest animal-disease outbreak ever seen in the US, killing or causing the destruction of more than 50 million birds and costing the US economy more than $3 billion. Human-health experts are uneasy as well. Since 2003, that flu has sickened at least 863 people across the world and killed more than half of them. Other avian flu strains have made hundreds more people ill. Before Covid arrived, avian flu was considered the disease most likely to cause a transnational outbreak.
It is far too soon to say whether the arrival of this virus in the US is a blip, an imminent danger to agriculture, or a zoonotic pathogen probing for a path to attack humanity. But it is a reminder that Covid is not the only disease with pandemic potential, and of how easy it is to lose focus when it comes to other possible threats. The possibility of a human- or animal-origin strain of flu swamping the world once seemed so imminent that back in 2005 the White House wrote a national strategy for it. But researchers say the surveillance schemes that would pick up its movement have since been allowed to drift.
“In wildlife disease surveillance, we’re always chasing a crisis,” says David Stallknecht, director of the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, a research institute housed at the University of Georgia. “And as soon as the crisis is over, the interest goes down. It’s difficult to keep going long-term. People are here to do the work, but the money isn’t there to support it.”
To understand the importance of those three ducks and the virus they were carrying, we need to take a quick tour through Flu School. Lesson One: The flu virus family tree is vast and sprawling; it contains types—A, B, C, D—and subtypes, designated with Hs and Ns. (Those are short for proteins that let the virus infect cells.) Just within the As, there are almost 200 subtypes; a few affect humans, but almost all of them can infect birds.ADVERTISEMENT
Lesson Two: For a long time, scientists thought humans were in little danger from all those other flu strains. That assumption was shattered in 1997, when an avian influenza, H5N1, jumped species in Hong Kong and infected 18 people, killing six of them. To shut it down, the local government slaughtered every chicken in the territory, denying the virus a host. That worked for a few years, but in 2003 H5N1 started to move across the world again, and it has been moving ever since.
Lesson Three: Avian flu can be dangerous to people, but it threatens some birds too. Waterbirds, chiefly ducks, carry it without illness, but it makes chickens sick. Here again, there are subcategories: Avian flu can be low-pathogenic, meaning that it makes birds mildly ill and slows down egg production. Or it can be highly pathogenic, or high-path: a fast-moving infection so vicious that it can kill an entire flock in two days. (A prominent poultry researcher once called it “chicken Ebola.”)
To sum all that up (there will not be a quiz): The flu found in the Carolinas is an H5N1, meaning it is of the subtype that normally infects birds but in the past has sickened people. It is a high-path variety, the kind that can wipe out domesticated flocks. It belongs to a strain related to that first species-crossing jump in 1997. And, to make matters worse, it represents just one instance of a remarkable amount of highly pathogenic H5N1 showing up in the world right now.
Last year, the World Organization for Animal Health (known by its French acronym, OIE) estimated that between May 1 and November 1, 41 countries experienced outbreaks of highly pathogenic bird flu, with 16,000 isolations of the virus reported just in October. Fifteen countries also reported outbreaks between October and December.
Occasional isolations of avian flu in wild birds are not unusual, but last fall high-path H5N1 began erupting in the United Kingdom with extraordinary intensity. Since October and into this year, the virus has been found in wild species, including swans, geese, shorebirds, and birds of prey. But it has also invaded poultry farms, primarily in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. By January, more than 1 million chickens and other birds had been destroyed to stop it from spreading. In December, the UK’s chief veterinary officer called the occurrence of bird flu there “phenomenal,” saying the strain had spread to the largest number of farm properties ever seen.
At almost the same moment, Dutch authorities were ordering the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of poultry on farms in the country. In the Czech Republic, more than 100,000 hens died of avian flu on an egg farm, and another 100,000 birds and about 1 million eggs were destroyed to stop the virus from spreading further. In France, farmers feared the virus would invade the duck-raising southwest, the home of foie gras. Last week, the agriculture ministry ordered 2.5 million birds killed. In Italy, more than 4 million poultry died or were slaughtered between October and December. And the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, the animal-disease research unit of the German government, said at the end of December that Europe was experiencing “the strongest avian influenza epidemic ever,” with cases reaching as far north as the Faroe Islands and as far south as Portugal.https://7131f41a6bea5330fef22104a83ee1fe.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.htmlMost Popular
Those slaughter numbers should make the case that the flu is not only a threat to animal welfare, but an engine of economic damage as well. Rabobank, a financial services and analysis firm based in the Netherlands, has already predicted that these massive culls, layered on top of pandemic-fueled freight problems and rising feed costs, could inflate food prices this year.
For the most part, birds stick to specific north-south migratory pathways and don’t fly laterally around the globe. So to scientists in North America, outbreaks of bird flu in Europe were a cause for worry, but not immediate alarm. But in December and again in January, high-path H5N1 was found in farms in Newfoundland, at the top of the migratory flyway that sweeps down the US coast. That is the same flyway that crosses over the Carolinas, where the virus-carrying ducks were caught—and also over the more than 1 billion chickens grown each year in Georgia, the most poultry-dense state in the US.
Because this flu is highly pathogenic, the challenge is that there is no time for mitigation once it arrives in a flock. As Midwest turkey producers experienced in 2015, it blows up into a destructive epidemic overnight. That requires poultry farmers to harden their defenses now—and while that seems like an obvious task, it requires precision and cost in an industry that runs on thin margins and speed. Carol Cardona, a wildlife veterinarian and chair of avian health at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, likens it to learning to live under Covid: Every daily action requires a calculation of risk and takes a little more patience than you can easily summon.
“It’s the same for growing poultry,” she says. “How do we feed them without introducing a little bit of risk? How do we care for them? In normal times, when we don’t have a threat, you can be more efficient in how you do things. But now things have to change. You have to be perfect all the time. That’s a lot of stress.”
Scientists who monitor wildlife fret that there is something else going on in this wave of flu. Wild waterbirds are accidental transport vehicles for the virus, but rarely victims. They pick it up and transfer it to other birds in ponds and wetlands at the ends of their migration journeys and then carry it with them, unharmed, once they return to the skies. But in Israel, where more than a half-million poultry have died or been slaughtered, the first sign of trouble was a mass die-off of thousands of wild cranes in a wetland that lies directly under a migration route. The European Food Safety Authority has identified deaths from flu in at least 80 other species of wild birds, leaving scientists to wonder whether bird flu has evolved into a further threat.
“The catastrophic issue economically is poultry,” Stallknecht says. “But we also have to be concerned with wildlife health. And there are some populations of shorebirds that are already not in good shape, so we need to be monitoring them also.”https://7131f41a6bea5330fef22104a83ee1fe.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.htmlMost Popular
There’s also evidence these new waves of bird flu have been leaking into humans. In the first week of January, UK health authorities revealed that a man in Devon who kept ducks as pets had the country’s first-ever human case of H5N1 bird flu. The ducks were all slaughtered; the man was reported to be quarantined and surviving the infection but lonely and missing his birds. In November, the WHO said it has been monitoring a slow surge in human infections in China caused by a known but less common bird flu subtype, H5N6. By the end of 2021, there had been 26 people infected, one of whom died. And in February a year ago, the Russian government revealed that seven poultry farm workers fell ill (and recovered) from yet another subtype, H5N8.
Other bird-specific strains have been surging into humans as well. The Chinese government disclosed last June that a man who had no known contact with poultry developed an infection with a flu strain never before seen in humans, H10N3, and that he was hospitalized but recovered. Since 2013, China has recorded more than 1,600 human cases of yet another strain, H7N9.
Though there have been notifications of those outbreaks—the regulations governing the WHO require countries to send immediate notification of high-path avian flu—they have not all included details about genetic sequences or spread. Researchers are hungry for answers. “The question is: What’s new?” says Daniel Lucey, an infectious-disease physician and senior scholar at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. “The quantity of outbreaks is massive, but has there been a change in qualitative risk? Have the sequences changed so the virus is more likely to infect humans? Can we document person-to-person spread?”
A further concern lurks behind this bloom of bird flu. Until now, biologists have assumed the danger is seasonal, triggered by the movement of waterbirds as they migrate: If there are no visiting birds overhead, or on shores or in ponds, they can’t spread a virus to local birds or people. But researchers are beginning to wonder whether climate change is interfering with migration patterns. The typical pattern for bird flu infections has been for them to begin during the fall migrations and then continue through the winter and into spring. But in Germany last year, scientists were able to identify H5 viruses in wild birds throughout the summer, a first.
It’s difficult for scientists to make the case for year-round surveillance and better financial support when they can’t say whether this wave of flu is a brief aberration or the first moments of a sustained emergency. But the world wouldn’t be facing that uncertainty if the capacity for surveillance and analysis had been built after the massive 2015 outbreak, or any of the ones before that. We didn’t do it earlier, so the time to start is now.
A sign at the edge of an exclusion zone warns of the closure of a footpath after an outbreak of bird flu in the village of Upham in southern England, February 3, 2015.(photo credit: REUTERS/PETER NICHOLLS)Advertisementhttps://trinitymedia.ai/player/trinity-player.php?pageURL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpost.com%2Fhealth-and-wellness%2Farticle-694366&unitId=2900003088&userId=43dabe08-2b1a-4c7c-bafe-85ac9a956566&isLegacyBrowser=false&version=20220124_f72f860bfd9c3551b2d6b109e6a4485f247ff3b3&useCFCDN=0&themeId=140
Two additional wild birds have been found to be infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) virus in South and North Carolina, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced on Tuesday.
The two birds were found to be infected just days after a wild American wigeon was found to be infected with the virus in Colleton County, South Carolina, the first case of Eurasian H5 avian influenza in the US since 2016. Other variants of the bird flu have been detected in the US in recent years.Top Articles By JPostRead More
Why did Bennett avoid making a decision on Netanyahu probe? – analysis
APHIS added that it expects to find further cases among wild birds and advised people to avoid having direct contact with wild birds. The service urged farmers and hunters to practice good biosecurity to prevent the spread of the virus.
The USDA added that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still considers the risk to the general public from the variant to be low. No human infections from the variant have occurred in the US.
In the UK, one person was infected with the H5N1 variant earlier this month and has since recovered without experiencing severe illness. The patient had close contact with ducks.Workers in protective gear seen in Moshav Givat Yoav, in northern Israel, December 29, 2021, following an outbreak of the Avian influenza. (credit: MICHAEL GILADI/FLASH90)
In China, a spike in the number of human infections caused by the H5N6 subvariant of the bird flu has been recorded in the past year. One new case of human infection was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) between January 14 to 20.
According to the WHO, the rise in H5N6 cases may reflect the continued circulation of the virus in birds and enhanced surveillance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO added that the zoonotic threat remains elevated due to the spread of the viruses among birds, but that the overall pandemic risk associated with the strain of bird flu has not significantly changed.
The increase in human infections caused by the H5N6 subtype of avian influenza is causing concern among experts, who say that a previously circulating strain appears to have changed and could be more infectious to people.
“The increase in human cases in China this year is of concern. It’s a virus that causes high mortality,” said Thijs Kuiken, professor of comparative pathology at Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, to Reuters in October.
A large number of bird flu outbreaks have been reported throughout Europe, Africa and Asia in recent weeks, mostly due to the H5N1 subtype, which comes from the H5 lineage, according to the World Organization for Animal Health.
Over a million birds were found to be infected with the variant in Israel in recent months, although Israel’s Agriculture Ministry declared in recent weeks that the outbreak is now under control.
The OIE has urged countries to increase surveillance for HPAI outbreaks, as the virus has been reported in over 40 countries since July.
The H5N1, H5N3, H5N4, H5N5, H5N6 and H5N8 subtypes of HPAI are circulating in bird and poultry populations across the globe, sparking concern at OIE which called this an “unprecedented genetic variability of subtypes… creating an epidemiologically challenging landscape.”
Earlier this month, OIE Director General Monique Eloit told Reuters that “this time the situation is more difficult and more risky because we see more variants emerge, which make them harder to follow.”
“Eventually the risk is that it mutates or that it mixes with a human flu virus that can be transmitted between humans then suddenly it takes on a new dimension,” she added.
Germany’s Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, told the German Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) that Europe is experiencing its “strongest avian flu epidemic ever.”
The institute added that “there is no end in sight” as the virus spreads throughout the continent and around the world, with new cases reported on a daily basis.
After reporting a record 31 human cases of avian influenza A(H5N6) in 2021, Chinese health officials are reporting the first case of 2022 in Guangdong Province.
Image by Dsndrn-Videolar from Pixabay
According to the Guangdong Provincial Health and Health Commission, the patient is a 43-year-old female from Zhongkai District, Huizhou City. The patient is currently in critical condition and is being admitted to a designated hospital in Huizhou. Health authorities were notified of the case on January 7.
Experts believe that the cases that appear this time are sporadic cases, and the risk of transmission of the virus is low at this stage. Experts remind: the public should continue to remain vigilant and take the following measures to prevent H5N6 and other bird flu.
Wash hands frequently: wash hands after touching birds, before meals and after toileting.
To be cooked: Poultry and eggs should be cooked before eating.
Seek medical treatment early: If you have respiratory symptoms such as fever, cough, headache, general malaise, etc., seek medical treatment at the nearest medical and health institution as soon as possible. If you have been in contact with birds before, you should take the initiative to tell your doctor.
Do not eat dead poultry.
Do not buy poultry products from unknown sources.
Avoid going to live poultry markets as much as possible.
This is the 58th human H5N6 avian influenza case reported in China since 2014.
by: Nouran Salahieh, Ellina AbovianPosted: Jan 3, 2022 / 09:46 AM PST / Updated: Jan 3, 2022 / 09:49 AM PSTjavascript:false
Los Angeles County recorded nearly 45,000 new coronavirus cases over the weekend as the omicron variant continued its relentless spread.
Even with the holiday lags in reporting, L.A. County recorded 23,553 new cases on Saturday and another 21,200 on Sunday.
County officials say over 20% of those getting tested are positive for the virus.
The county’s seven-day average daily positivity rate climbed to 21.8% Sunday, up from 14.9% one week prior.
Making matters worse, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has skyrocketed to 1,628.
“During this surge, given the spread of a more infectious strain of the virus, lapses can lead to explosive transmission,” L.A. County health director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement Sunday.
This year’s winter surge has not been as deadly as last year’s, when morgues filled up and refrigerated trucks had to be brought in. But the current surge is sending case numbers climbing fast.
County officials have been pleading with residents to stop participating in higher-risk activities, like going unmasked indoors for long periods of time or attending crowded outdoor events.
With the highly contagious omicron variant spreading, it appears that only recently-vaccinated or boosted people have significant protection from becoming infected, the Health Department said Friday.
“This leaves millions of people across LA County vulnerable to COVID infection,” health officials added.
Ferrer has warned that the coming days will be “extraordinarily challenging” for the county as the virus spreads.
“With explosive transmission likely to continue for some weeks to come, all efforts now need to focus on protecting our healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed,” the health director said. “Since most people in our hospitals with serious illness from COVID are unvaccinated, those not yet vaccinated or boosted need to please stay away from others as much as possible to avoid getting infected or infecting others.”
While authorities have assured community members that vaccines and boosters continue to offer strong protection against severe illness and death, vulnerable people need to start layering on more protection.
That means wearing high-quality masks and limiting non-essential activities.
“Although masks can be annoying and even uncomfortable for some, given that many infected individuals are spreading COVID 1 -2 days b
by: Nouran Salahieh, Ellina AbovianPosted: Jan 3, 2022 / 09:46 AM PST / Updated: Jan 3, 2022 / 09:49 AM PSTjavascript:false
Los Angeles County recorded nearly 45,000 new coronavirus cases over the weekend as the omicron variant continued its relentless spread.
Even with the holiday lags in reporting, L.A. County recorded 23,553 new cases on Saturday and another 21,200 on Sunday.
County officials say over 20% of those getting tested are positive for the virus.
The county’s seven-day average daily positivity rate climbed to 21.8% Sunday, up from 14.9% one week prior.
Making matters worse, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has skyrocketed to 1,628.
“During this surge, given the spread of a more infectious strain of the virus, lapses can lead to explosive transmission,” L.A. County health director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement Sunday.
This year’s winter surge has not been as deadly as last year’s, when morgues filled up and refrigerated trucks had to be brought in. But the current surge is sending case numbers climbing fast.
County officials have been pleading with residents to stop participating in higher-risk activities, like going unmasked indoors for long periods of time or attending crowded outdoor events.
With the highly contagious omicron variant spreading, it appears that only recently-vaccinated or boosted people have significant protection from becoming infected, the Health Department said Friday.
“This leaves millions of people across LA County vulnerable to COVID infection,” health officials added.
Ferrer has warned that the coming days will be “extraordinarily challenging” for the county as the virus spreads.
“With explosive transmission likely to continue for some weeks to come, all efforts now need to focus on protecting our healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed,” the health director said. “Since most people in our hospitals with serious illness from COVID are unvaccinated, those not yet vaccinated or boosted need to please stay away from others as much as possible to avoid getting infected or infecting others.”
While authorities have assured community members that vaccines and boosters continue to offer strong protection against severe illness and death, vulnerable people need to start layering on more protection.
That means wearing high-quality masks and limiting non-essential activities.
“Although masks can be annoying and even uncomfortable for some, given that many infected individuals are spreading COVID 1 -2 days b
People visit a promenade in the city of Tiberias, next to the Sea of Galilee on January 30, 2020. (David Cohen/Flash90)
An expert warned Thursday that the avian flu outbreak that has killed vast numbers of domestic and wildfowl in recent weeks in northern Israel will spread to the Sea of Galilee.
Professor Moshe Gofen, former head of the Kinneret Limnological Laboratory, said the flow of water from the Hula Lake Reserve — where some 5,000 cranes died of the disease — to the Sea of Galilee poses a danger to humans, according to the Kan public broadcaster.
Gofen claimed there was no way of stopping the lake’s waters from becoming polluted and called to warn the general public, as the Agriculture Ministry said it was concerned about the virus infecting humans.
But the Water Authority and the Health Ministry said that tests have so far not found the water in the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River to be contaminated with the virus.
“It is important to emphasize that infection of the bird flu can occur in close contact with infected birds and their secretions. However, the possibility of humans being infected is low,” the government agencies said in a joint statement.Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Editionby email and never miss our top storiesNewsletter email addressGET ITBy signing up, you agree to the terms
It added that there has been no recorded case of a human being infected with the bird flu from water or food.Gathering the carcasses of wild cranes killed by avian flu at the Hula Lake Nature Reserve in northern Israel, December 27. (Hadas Kahaner, Israel Nature and Parks Authority)
The H5N1 virus outbreak began in the Hula Valley and the community of Margaliot in the upper Galilee, next to the Lebanese border.
In Margaliot, more than half a million egg-laying chickens have died or been culled. All the poultry sheds are infected and have been sealed off by inspectors.ADVERTISEMENT
The public was advised to make sure to thoroughly cook eggs and other chicken products to kill any viruses or bacteria.
Agriculture Minister Oded Forer said he had allowed untaxed imports of eggs and that there would not be a shortage.
The Agriculture Ministry has not yet managed to pinpoint how the highly contagious viral disease H5N1 got into the Hula reserve, which attracts tens of thousands of cranes during the spring and summer migration seasons, particularly as food is distributed there to keep the birds away from commercial crop fields.
The danger of the bird flu outbreak jumping to humans is a serious source of concern, top epidemiologist Prof. Amnon Lahad told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.
“The widespread nature of the avian flu is very concerning, especially given that it is infecting chickens and not just wild birds. It’s made the move from wildlife to stock animals, and I’m hoping it won’t make the next step to humans,” he said.
Most bird flu strains don’t infect humans. However, four strains have caused concern: H5N1 since 1997, H7N9 since 2013, H5N6 since 2014 and H5N8 since 2016.ADVERTISEMENT
The first outbreak this fall was at Moshav Nahalal in the Jezreel Valley, according to a notice sent out to poultry breeders on October 18 by the ministry’s veterinary service. Noting that avian flu was sometimes carried by wild birds — Israel sits on the annual migration route between Europe, Asia, and Africa — it called for the immediate transfer of all organic, free-range, and other outdoor chickens to closed facilities.Filthy conditions at a northern Israeli egg farm, where chickens live in cages above piles of their own excrement. (Screenshot)
By November 3, the virus was also found at Kibbutz Maayan Zvi, near Zichron Yaakov, and as of November 21, it had spread to a duck farm in Kfar Baruch in the Jezreel Valley and a turkey farm in Ein Zurim, south of Kiryat Malachi in southern Israel.
Authorities have said the outbreak among chickens is partially due to farmers using primitive coops, unsanitary conditions and poor monitoring or reporting by farmers in Margaliot.
The farmers are up in arms over proposals to remove quotas for egg production and to open the industry up to local and international competition.
Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg called the outbreak “the worst blow to wildlife in the country’s history,” and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has discussed the outbreak with top security officials.
LONDON – The UK government urged poultry producers, and anyone keeping birds to follow strict biosecurity protocols and keep birds indoors as the country faces its largest-ever outbreak of avian influenza.
“We have taken swift action to limit the spread of the disease including introducing housing measures,” said Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss. “However, we are seeing a growing number of bird flu cases both on commercial farms and in backyard birds right across the country.”
In November, Chief Veterinary Officers for England, Scotland and Wales declared an Avian Influenza Prevention Zone across the whole of Great Britain following a number of detections of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza in wild birds across country. All bird keepers, regardless of the number of birds, are legally required to introduce higher biosecurity standards on farms or small holdings.
Also, anyone keeping 50 birds or more must register their flocks with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
“Implementing scrupulous biosecurity has never been more critical,” Middlemiss said. “You must regularly clean and disinfect your footwear and clothes before entering enclosures, stop your birds mixing with any wild birds and only allow visitors that are strictly necessary. It is your actions that will help keep your birds safe.”
Poultry keepers are required to:
house or net all poultry and captive birds to keep them separate from wild birds.
cleanse and disinfect clothing, equipment and vehicles before and after contact with poultry and captive birds – if practical, use disposable protective clothing.
change their footwear before entering sheds housing poultry and captive birds, where possible. If not, then ensure they are thoroughly cleaned and disinfected.
reduce the movement of people, vehicles or equipment to and from areas where poultry and captive birds are kept, to minimize contamination from manure, slurry and other products, and use effective vermin control.
thoroughly cleanse and disinfect housing on a continuous basis.
keep fresh disinfectant at the right concentration at all farm and poultry housing entry and exit points; and
minimize direct and indirect contact between poultry and captive birds and wild birds, including making sure all feed and water is not accessible to wild birds.
“Many poultry keepers have excellent biosecurity standards but the number of cases we are seeing suggests that not enough is being done to keep bird flu out,” Middlemiss explained. “Whether you keep just a few birds or thousands you must take action now to protect your birds from this highly infectious disease.”
Waterworks Park, Belfast. (Image: Justin Kernoghan/Belfast Live)
Stay on top of the headlines from Belfast and beyond by signing up for FREE email alertsSign me up!We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info
A public health warning has been issued after two birds died from avian flu at Belfast Waterworks.
While human infections of avian influenza viruses are rare – they are possible and can cause a fever, cough, muscle pain, a sore throat, runny nose and conjunctivitis.
As a result, Public Health Agency consultant Dr Philip Veal has urged people not to touch dead birds, their feathers and faeces and also to keep pets away from them.
Dr Veal said: “Although human infections with avian influenza are rare, some viruses, such as H5N1 or H7N9, have been associated with human disease.
Workers in protective gear seen in Moshav Givat Yoav, in northern Israel, December 29, 2021, following an outbreak of the Avian influenza. (credit: MICHAEL GILADI/FLASH90)
Gathering the carcasses of wild cranes killed by avian flu at the Hula Lake Nature Reserve in northern Israel, December 27. (Hadas Kahaner, Israel Nature and Parks Authority)
Filthy conditions at a northern Israeli egg farm, where chickens live in cages above piles of their own excrement. (Screenshot)
The Extinction Chronicles 
