{"id":11517,"date":"2026-02-25T14:29:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T20:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11517"},"modified":"2026-02-25T14:29:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T20:29:28","slug":"deadly-bird-flu-found-in-california-elephant-seals-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/02\/25\/deadly-bird-flu-found-in-california-elephant-seals-for-the-first-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadly bird flu found in California elephant seals for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/science\/story\/2026-02-25\/h5n1-bird-flu-presumed-in-california-elephant-seals\">LA Times<\/a> The H5N1 bird flu virus that devastated South American elephant seal populations has been confirmed in seals at California\u2019s A\u00f1o Nuevo State Park, researchers from UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz announced Wednesday. The virus has ravaged wild, commercial and domestic animals across the globe and was found in seven weaned pups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The confirmation came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s laboratory in Ames, Iowa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The death toll so far was not provided, but a press release from UC Davis noted at least some animals had succumbed. In most wildlife cases, carcasses and tissue samples are sent to the USDA for confirmatory testing. \u201cThis is exceptionally rapid detection of an outbreak in free-ranging marine mammals,\u201d said Professor Christine Johnson, director of the Institute for Pandemic Insights at the University of California, Davis\u2019 Weill School of Veterinary Medicine. \u201cWe have most likely identified the very first cases here because of coordinated teams that have been on high alert with active surveillance for this disease for some time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/science\/story\/2026-02-25\/h5n1-bird-flu-presumed-in-california-elephant-seals\">Continue reading<\/a><br><\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\" ShCEaWAeLXgbO aoatq \"><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LA Times The H5N1 bird flu virus that devastated South American elephant seal populations has been confirmed in seals at California\u2019s A\u00f1o Nuevo State Park, researchers from UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz announced Wednesday. The virus has ravaged wild, commercial and domestic animals across the globe and was found in seven weaned pups. The [&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-11517","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\/11517","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=11517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11518,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11517\/revisions\/11518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}