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Tag: avian flu

Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu

Avian influenza in the United States closely monitored by authorities

Published June 30, 2024

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Published by: Radio-Canada / The Canadian Press
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The rise in the number of cases of avian influenza on farms in the United States, the infection of cow herds and recent cases of transmission to human beings are of concern to Quebec and Canadian authorities, who say they are monitoring the situation very closely.

Avian influenza – specifically avian influenza of subtypes H5 and H7 – is a reportable disease in Quebec. Avian influenza is a zoonosis, meaning it can be transmitted from animals to humans.

Cases of avian influenza in humans remain very rare, but last spring three cases of human infection associated with infected dairy farms were reported in the United States. Two infected people had eye symptoms and the third person suffered a respiratory infection.

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Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu

Finland to start bird flu vaccinations for humans, in world first

Published June 26, 2024

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Published by: Reuters
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Finland plans to offer preemptive bird flu vaccination as soon as next week to some workers with exposure to animals, health authorities said on Tuesday, making it the first country in the world to do so.

The Nordic country has bought vaccines for 10,000 people, each consisting of two injections, as part of a joint EU procurement of up to 40 million doses for 15 nations from manufacturer CSL Seqirus (CSL.AX).

The European Commission said Finland would be the first country to roll out the vaccine.

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Topic: OntarioView all posts for the topic: Ontario

‘Dream tool’ being taken away by province, says public health doc

Published June 24, 2024

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Published by: CollingwoodToday
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By Erika Engel

News that the province is shutting down wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases has left Simcoe-Muskoka’s associate medical officer of health “disappointed.”

“It is really unfortunate because I think the rest of the world is certainly embracing this (science), so I’m not quite sure why they’re not continuing this very important infectious disease surveillance tool let alone for COVID, but also for influenza and other infections,” said Dr. Colin Lee from the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit.

The Ontario wastewater surveillance network that began in 2020 as a way to track COVID-19 in wastewater includes 59 sampling sites across Ontario, covering about 60 per cent of the province’s population.

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Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu

Former director of the CDC predicts the next pandemic will be from bird flu

Published June 17, 2024

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Published by: The Independent
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By Gustaf Kilander

The former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Robert Redfield, has said that the next pandemic could be from bird flu.

The World Health Organization recently announced the first human death from bird flu in Mexico, and the virus has been found in cattle across the US.

“I really do think it’s very likely that we will, at some time, it’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic,” Redfield told NewsNation on Friday.

He added that the mortality rate is likely to be much higher from bird flu compared to Covid-19.

While the mortality rate was 0.6 per cent for Covid-19, Redfield said the mortality for the bird flu would probably be “somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent.”

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Topic: OntarioView all posts for the topic: Ontario

Cutting wastewater surveillance is short-sighted

Published June 8, 2024

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Published by: Toronto Star
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Ontario to halt COVID wastewater surveillance program, June 4

The Ontario government’s plan to axe funding for wastewater surveillance is irresponsible. Wastewater monitoring is an essential public health tool that provides insights into the spread of SARS-CoV-2, influenza and other viruses. Without funding, we will lose important information about the prevalence of these significant health concerns.

The timing of the announcement is astonishing. We are faced with an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and new hyper-infectious subvariants are spreading rapidly. We will be hindered in providing an early warning system to inform everyone about new subvariants and emerging pandemic threats such as avian flu.

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Topic: OntarioView all posts for the topic: Ontario

Ontario’s wastewater testing program to be replaced by a federal program that is significantly smaller

Published June 6, 2024

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Published by: Ottawa Citizen
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By Elizabeth Payne

When Ontario’s wastewater surveillance program is shut down next month it will be replaced by a significantly smaller federal program. That potential information gap worries some researchers and public health experts, especially at a time when COVID-19 cases are starting to tick up and avian influenza is spreading rapidly.

Ontario’s wastewater testing initiative, considered a world leader, currently tests wastewater for signs of infectious diseases including COVID, influenza, RSV and more at 58 locations across the province. The provincial government plans to pull the plug on the program at the end of July, saying it wants to avoid duplication with an expanding pan-Canadian wastewater surveillance program.

That new federal program includes plans to conduct wastewater surveillance in five Ontario cities. Four of the five cities have not yet been selected.

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Topic: OntarioView all posts for the topic: Ontario

Ontario is a ‘world leader’ in wastewater surveillance for COVID. The province’s decision to close testing sites will end that, experts say

Published June 5, 2024

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Published by: Toronto Star
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By Megan Ogilvie

Researchers are warning that Ontario’s decision to shut down its wastewater surveillance program that proved crucial in tracking COVID-19 will limit the province’s ability to rapidly respond to infectious disease threats, including new COVID variants, respiratory viruses and bird flu.

A key member of the waterwater surveillance program says Ontario has been a “world leader and now we’ll probably be one of the passengers” by the scale-back that will also stifle research.

Cancelling the provincial surveillance system — the largest in Canada — will drastically reduce the number of testing sites in the province, experts say. They also caution that shuttering the program will mean that monitoring may no longer take place in smaller communities and in rural and northern areas, potentially missing vulnerable populations.

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Topic: OntarioView all posts for the topic: Ontario

Radio | Peterborough Medical Officer of Health frustrated with the province’s decision to pullback on waste water monitoring

Published June 5, 2024

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Published by: CBC Radio / Ontario Morning with Ramraajh Sharvendiran
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Medical officer of health for Peterborough Public Health, Dr. Thomas Piggott talks with host Molly Thomas about why he believes we shouldn’t drop wastewater testing for diseases — even if COVID-19 is not the same threat it was when the program was rolled out.

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Topic: OntarioView all posts for the topic: Ontario

‘I was shocked’: Ontario to cancel widely used wastewater surveillance program

Published June 4, 2024

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Published by: Ottawa Citizen
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By Elizabeth Payne

The Ontario government is shutting down the wastewater surveillance program that has provided early warning for incoming waves of COVID-19 and a growing list of other infectious diseases since it was developed.

By the time it ends on July 31, the program that got its start in Ottawa early in the pandemic will be one of the biggest in the world to monitor the spread of infectious diseases through wastewater. Researchers were told of the decision to end funding last week.

Its closure comes at a time when COVID-19 is again beginning to spread through the world after a lull and when the United States and other countries are ramping up wastewater surveillance programs to warn about the possible spread of H5N1 avian influenza.

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Ontario: Protect our health — save Ontario’s wastewater monitoring!Photo of some test tubes and equipment in a lab, with text: Protect our health. Save Ontario’s wastewater monitoring. StillCoviding.ca.
Topic: take actionView all posts for the topic: take action

Ontario: Protect our health — save Ontario’s wastewater monitoring!

Published June 4, 2024

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📣 Let MPPs know you want funding for Ontario’s wastewater monitoring program to continue

✉️ Send letters to MPPs to voice your support for wastewater monitoring. Use our online tool to send emails.

Why take action? Wastewater monitoring is an essential public health tool that provides insights into the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses in Ontario’s communities.

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Topic: masksView all posts for the topic: masks

Masks work, our comprehensive review has found

Published May 22, 2024

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Published by: The Conversation
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By Trish Greenhalgh, C Raina MacIntyre, David Fisman

When a Texan farm worker caught bird flu from cattle recently, social media was abuzz with rumours. While bird flu is not a human pandemic, scientists and policymakers the world over are keen to prepare as best they can for when such a pandemic emerges – a tricky task, given that science is messy, policy must be pragmatic and people’s values don’t always align.

It’s time for masks to enter the chat. At the beginning of a pandemic caused by a novel or newly mutated virus, there may be no vaccine, no firm knowledge about how bad things will get and no specific treatment. Slowing transmission until more is known will be critical.

Getting most people to wear a mask could nip the outbreak in the bud, preventing a pandemic or lessening its impact. Wearing a mask is inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as lockdowns.

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Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu

CDC launching wastewater dashboard to track bird flu virus spread

Published May 13, 2024

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Published by: STAT
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By Megan Molteni, Helen Branswell

Reluctance among dairy farmers to report H5N1 bird flu outbreaks within their herds or allow testing of their workers has made it difficult to keep up with the virus’s rapid spread, prompting federal public health officials to look to wastewater to help fill in the gaps.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to unveil a public dashboard tracking influenza A viruses in sewage that the agency has been collecting from 600 wastewater treatment sites around the country since last fall.

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Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu

What we’re starting to learn about H5N1 in cows, and the risk to people

Published April 30, 2024

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Published by: STAT
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By Helen Branswell, Megan Molteni

The H5N1 bird flu virus has been around for decades, and the damage it wreaks on chickens and other poultry is well documented. But the recent discovery that the virus has jumped into dairy cattle — whose udders seem to be where the virus either infects or migrates to — has dumbfounded scientists and agricultural authorities.

Questions for which there are pretty clear answers when it comes to birds are suddenly unsettled science in cows. How are they getting infected? Are they transmitting the virus cow to cow, or are human actions — activities that are part of the day-to-day of farming — serving as an unrecognized amplifier of viral transmission? In the interface between infected cows and humans, how might people be at risk? Does consuming milk laced with live H5 virus pose a hazard?

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Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu

There’s never a good time to drink raw milk. But now’s a really bad time as bird flu infects cows

Published April 29, 2024

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Published by: STAT
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By Helen Branswell

Scientists who know about the types of pathogens — E. coli and Salmonella among them — that can be transmitted in raw milk generally think drinking unpasteurized milk is a bad idea. But right now, they believe, the danger associated with raw milk may have gone to a whole new level.

“If I were in charge, for the moment I would forbid the selling of raw milk,” said Thijs Kuiken, a pathologist in the department of viroscience at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who has done research on H5N1 and the damage it inflicts for about two decades.

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Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu

Cattle testing for H5N1 bird flu will be more limited than USDA initially announced

Published April 26, 2024

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Published by: STAT
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By Megan Molteni

New federal rules aimed at limiting the spread of the H5N1 bird flu virus among dairy cattle go into effect Monday, but detailed guidance documents released Friday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal its mandatory testing order is less stringent than initially described.

While that is easing concerns from farmers and veterinarians about the economic and logistical burden of testing, it leaves questions about how effective the testing program will be at containing additional outbreaks.

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Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu

Canadian officials considering ‘pre-pandemic’ vaccines as bird flu spreads through U.S. livestock

Published April 26, 2024

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Published by: Ottawa Citizen
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By Elizabeth Payne

As H5N1 bird flu spreads rapidly through livestock and other animals across the U.S., Canadian officials are exploring stockpiling “pre-pandemic” H5N1 vaccines as a precaution.

The highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) has not been detected in any Canadian livestock and the risk of transmission for the general public is considered low, but the recent rapid spread of the virus through livestock and elsewhere in the U.S. has public health officials around the world on high alert.

Health experts are urging people not to drink raw, unpasteurized, milk and to make sure meat is thoroughly cooked, but they say the real potential risk from bird flu is not from food, but from the possibility that changes to the virus enable it to jump from animals to humans. That could create a potential influenza pandemic because human immunity to the virus is expected to be minimal.

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