{"id":10700,"date":"2025-10-29T19:15:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10700"},"modified":"2025-10-29T19:15:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:15:29","slug":"bird-flu-is-back-heres-what-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/10\/29\/bird-flu-is-back-heres-what-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird Flu Is Back. Here\u2019s What to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/why-bird-flu-is-surging-again-and-what-it-means-for-public-health\/\">Scientific American<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a quiet summer, bird flu cases are rising again. Scientists expected the development, but what happens next is still uncertain. After a summer lull in U.S. cases of avian influenza in both poultry and dairy cattle\u2014and no human infections reported in the country since February\u2014the virus is back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/bird-flu\/\">Bird flu<\/a>\u2019s return threatens major economic losses for the U.S. agricultural system and raises a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/could-bird-flu-spread-between-humans-heres-what-it-would-take\/\">small but real risk of a human pandemic<\/a>.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/bird-flu-is-out-of-the-news-but-still-circulating\/\">Scientists expected bird flu to return<\/a>. It was highly unlikely that, following three full years of infecting U.S. poultry and making\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/podcast\/episode\/how-bird-flu-went-from-devastating-poultry-farms-to-infecting-dairy-herds\/\">the surprising leap into cows<\/a>, the virus would simply disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The currently circulating bird flu subtype H5N1 is here to stay. \u201cWe\u2019ve resigned to this phase,\u201d says Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University. \u201cNow we have to figure out what we\u2019re doing next.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Scientific American<\/em>&nbsp;spoke with Lakdawala and other experts about why the virus has returned, what threats it poses, and what people need to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"how-prevalent-is-bird-flu-right-now\">How prevalent is bird flu right now?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In poultry, bird flu is on the rise: according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 50 flocks of commercial and backyard poultry in the country had confirmed avian influenza infections in October.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/rfk-jr-wants-to-let-bird-flu-spread-on-poultry-farms-why-experts-are\/\">Farmers cull all birds on infected premises to reduce the virus\u2019s spread<\/a>, and this month, more than three million animals have been killed to date.<\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"ZVFWDtjg\"><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientific American After a quiet summer, bird flu cases are rising again. Scientists expected the development, but what happens next is still uncertain. After a summer lull in U.S. cases of avian influenza in both poultry and dairy cattle\u2014and no human infections reported in the country since February\u2014the virus is back. Bird flu\u2019s return threatens [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avian-influenza"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10701,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10700\/revisions\/10701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}