Author: Claudinne Miller
There’s a New Covid Variant. What Will That Mean for Spring and Summer?
NYT For most of this year, the JN.1 variant of the coronavirus accounted for an overwhelming majority of Covid cases. But now, an offshoot variant called KP.2 is taking off. The variant, which made up just one percent of cases in the United States in mid-March, now makes up over a quarter. KP.2 belongs to a […]
May 14, 2024
Just One Human Is Infected by Bird Flu in the US. More Cases Are Likely
Bloomberg It’s spreading rapidly among cows. It’s also infecting skunks, mountain lions and red foxes. Yet as the highly contagious avian flu affects mammals across the US, just one human case has been reported so far. But that’s probably only because there is extremely limited testing of people underway to detect it. State governments and farm owners […]
May 8, 2024
Avian flu hits more turkeys in Gratiot County, Michigan
Watt Poultry Gratiot County, Michigan, has had two commercial meat turkey flocks affected by H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in less than a week. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced that the presence of HPAI was confirmed in a flock of 26,400 turkeys on May 2. HPAI was confirmed […]
May 8, 2024
Study of cow tissues provides clues for unusual pattern of bird flu infections in dairy cattle
STAT A different cow tissues may help to explain the pattern of illness being seen in the outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in U.S. dairy cattle — and also is sparking debate about the implications of the cow outbreak for human disease. The study, a preprint that hasn’t yet been through peer review by a scientific journal, […]
May 8, 2024
Squirrels may have given medieval Britons leprosy
BBC Humans may have caught leprosy from squirrels in medieval times, researchers say. They studied human and red squirrel bones from archaeological sites in Winchester, southern England, and found they had closely related strains of the bacteria that causes it. Leprosy is a chronic disease infectious between humans that attacks the skin, nerves and mucous […]
May 7, 2024
How to tell if a conspiracy theory is probably false
The Conversation Conspiracy theories are everywhere, and they can involve just about anything. People believe false conspiracy theories for a wide range of reasons – including the fact that there are real conspiracies, like efforts by the Sackler family to profit by concealing the addictiveness of oxycontin at the cost of countless American lives. The extreme consequences of unfounded conspiratorial beliefs could be […]
May 7, 2024
Future pandemics will have the same human causes as ancient outbreaks − lessons from anthropology can help prevent them
The Conversation The last pandemic was bad, but COVID-19 is only one of many infectious diseases that emerged since the turn of this century. Since 2000, the world has experienced 15 novel Ebola epidemics, the global spread of a 1918-like influenza strain and major outbreaks of three new and unusually deadly coronavirus infections: SARS, MERS and, of course, COVID-19. Every year, researchers […]
May 7, 2024
California city declares a public health emergency after tuberculosis sickens 14
NBC News The City Council of Long Beach, California, is poised to authorize a public health emergency in response to a local outbreak of tuberculosis. The city’s health officer, Dr. Anissa Davis, declared the emergency last week, after its health department detected 14 tuberculosis cases at a single-room occupancy hotel. The City Council vote on Tuesday […]
May 7, 2024
Griffith University researchers to trial naltrexone on long COVID patients
ABC.net Jayden Donald went from a fit and healthy teenager who rode his horses almost every day, to being so sick he could hardly sit up after his second bout of COVID-19. A year later, the 19-year-old talented equestrian has only recently returned to university and to the competitive dressage arena after being diagnosed with […]
May 7, 2024
There’s no question H5N1 bird flu has ‘pandemic potential.’ How likely is that worst-case scenario?
CBC News: Unprecedented scale of outbreaks raises new concerns, scientists warn. As early as 1997, just a year after H5N1 was first discovered, there were warning signs this form of avian flu was capable of wreaking havoc far beyond birds. That year, poultry outbreaks in China and Hong Kong were linked to 18 human infections […]
May 7, 2024