Misc. Sunday H5N1 - variations on a theme
Rick Bright in NY Times, Argentina Preprint on H5N1 in Elephant Seals, HPAI in Cherokee Co IA turkeys
Rick Bright, former head of BARDA, wrote a New York Times editorial today calling for greatly increased human screening for H5N1, given the latest case from Michigan with respiratory symptoms:
nytimes.com/2024/06/02/opinion/bird-flu-case-respiratory
It’s unclear to me how much more CDC could do to enforce more screening and/or serological testing short of perhaps declaring a public health emergency? Even then gaining cooperation would continue to be an uphill battle.
Look for more information from CDC Monday on the viral isolate from the second Michigan human case. Last Thursday they had not yet subtyped the neuraminidase or sequenced the entire viral genome. Hopefully they will read the complete genome to study for any further mammalian/human adaptations of concern. I’d also expect them to have bovine sequences from the associated farm provided by USDA for comparison?
More contemporary curated sequences with metadata have not yet been made publicly available on GISAID, with no dairy sequences available with confirmation dates later than April 5th. As noted by Dr. Bright, USDA is approaching a 60-day lag in GISAID submissions since their preprint was published in April.
Michael Coston, blogging in Avian Flu Diary, covered a detailed preprint today from Argentina describing a large outbreak of H5N1 2.3.4.4b in elephant seals, with evidence of mammal-to-mammal transmission:
This virus is obviously mutating in a lot of ways in a lot of places. Just the wildlife tragedies are excruciating, without even considering the potential for further death and destruction from onward mutations.
Finally, just this evening we got word of another HPAI outbreak in a turkey flock in Cherokee County Iowa:
Iowa and Minnesota appear to be hot spots right now for avian outbreaks. Neither state has reported dairy H5N1. Let’s hope it stays that way. It will be interesting to learn whether the poultry strain involved in both states is the B3.13 “dairy strain” and if any positive wild bird sampling matches up with the poultry outbreaks.
Be ready for another eventful week!
John