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Európa Europe
Magyarország
2024. év 11. hét. Tájékoztató a légúti figyelőszolgálat adatairól (2024. március 11 - 17. közötti adatok). A légúti figyelőszolgálat keretében kijelölt 24 kórház adatai alapján e héten 162 beteget vettek fel kórházba súlyos, akut légúti fertőzés (SARI) miatt, közülük 17-en részesültek intenzív/szubintenzív ellátásban. A kórházi ápolást igénylő 162 SARI beteg közül 84-en 2 évesek vagy annál fiatalabbak, 39-en 60 évesek vagy annál idősebbek. Húsz betegnél influenza A, 52-nél RSV, 2-nél SARS-CoV-2 vírus okozott megbetegedést. Negyvenkét RSV-pozitív beteg 2 éves vagy annál fiatalabb, a COVID-19 fertőzöttek egyike 2, másikuk 16 éves. A figyelőszolgálatban résztvevő orvosok jelentései alapján végzett becslés szerint az országban 26 400-an fordultak orvoshoz influenzaszerű, 196 500-an pedig akut légúti fertőzés tüneteivel. Influenza okozta SARI megbetegedést a 20 év alattiak és az 50-75 évesek korcsoportjaiban diagnosztizáltak. Influenzaszerű megbetegedés esetén a betegek több mint 42%-a 0-14 éves gyermek, közel 30% 15-34 éves fiatal felnőtt, közel 19% a 35-59 évesek korcsoportjába tartozik, kevesebb mint 9% pedig 60 éven felüli. Azonos korcsoportba tartozó 100 000 lakosra a megbetegedések száma a 3‑5 évesek és a 6-14 évesek között a legnagyobb - 921, illetve 694 esettel. Az influenzás tünetekkel orvoshoz fordulás gyakorisága tizenkilenc közigazgatási területen csökkent, egy területen - Baranyában - nem változott az előző hét adataihoz viszonyítva. Orvoshoz fordult, 100 000 lakosra jutó betegek száma Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, Somogy és Győr-Moson-Sopron vármegyékben volt a legnagyobbb, 456, 455, illetve 446 esettel, Heves, Veszprém és Békés vármegyében pedig a legalacsonyabb, 88, 159, illetve 166 esettel. Laboratóriumi vizsgálattal igazolt, influenzavírus által okozott megbetegedéseket Budapesten és 10 vármegyében - Bács-Kiskunban, Csongrád-Csanádban, Fejérben, Győr-Moson-Sopronban, Hajdú-Biharban, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnokban, Komárom-Esztergomban, Pest vármegyében, Somogyban s Veszprémben - diagnosztizáltak. Akut légúti fertőzés esetén a betegek korcsoport szerinti megoszlása: több mint 50% 0-14 éves gyermek, közel 24% 15-34 éves fiatal felnőtt, közel 17% a 35-59 évesek, közel 9% a 60 éven felüliek korcsoportjába tartozó. Akut légúti megbetegedés halmozódásáról nem érkezett jelentés. Légúti minta 299 betegtől érkezett a Nemzeti Népegészségügyi és Gyógyszerészeti Központ (NNGYK) Nemzeti Influenza Referencia Laboratóriumába. A sentinel kórházak által beküldött 19 minta közül 1 betegnél influenza A(H1pdm09) vírust, 7 betegnél RSV-t, 3 betegnél human metapneumovírust azonosítottak. A sentinel orvosok által beküldött 174 minta közül 18 betegnél az influenza A(H1pdm09), 3 betegnél az influenza A(H3), 4 betegnél az influenza B, 11 betegnél az RSV, 14 betegnél a human metapneumovírus, 1 betegnél a SARS-CoV-2 vírus kóroki szerepét igazolták. Az influenza pozitivitási arány 14,4%, az RSV pozitivitási arány 6,3%, a SARS-CoV-2 pozitivitási arány 0,6%. Hagyományos diagnosztikus célú vizsgálat keretében érkezett 36 légúti minta közül 3 influenza A(H1pdm09), 1 influenza A(H3) vírus, 3 RSV, 6 human metapneumovírus pozitív volt. A 2023. év 40. és a 2024. év 11. hete között összesen 6 053 vizsgálati anyagot dolgoztak fel az NNGYK Nemzeti Influenza Referencia Laboratóriumban. Kilencszázhuszonegy influenza A[734 influenza A(H1pdm09), 185 influenza A(H3), 2 influenza A(NT)], 53 influenza B, 278 RSV, 1 065 COVID-19 fertőzést igazoltak. 50 megbetegedést rhinovírus, 7-et parainfluenza, 6-ot adenovírus, 102-t human metapneumovírus okozott. (Forrás: nnk *)
* 'Nemzeti Népegészségügyi Központ'
Ireland
March 15, 2024 Brain fog is a debilitating symptom commonly reported by people with long COVID. For some people, brain fog can feel like a slowdown in thinking or difficulty recalling short-term memories, Campbell, a geneticist at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, says. For example, “patients will go for a drive, and forget where they’re driving to.” That might sound trivial, he says, but it actually pushes people into panic mode. Campbell’s team studies repetitive head trauma. They knew that traumatic brain injuries can disrupt the blood brain barrier - and that people with these injuries sometimes report having brain fog. That mental muddling reminded the team of what people with long COVID can experience. Maybe the blood brain barrier disruption seen in some concussion patients applies to long COVID brain fog, too, the researchers surmised. Evidence for SARS-CoV-2’s damaging effects on the brain has been mounting for years. Studies in cells and animals suggest the virus can crumble components of the blood brain barrier. In patients with brain fog, MRI scans revealed signs of damaged blood vessels in their brains, researchers reported February 22 in Nature Neuroscience. But until now, no one knew if this kind of damage persisted long after the initial infection subsided. The team scanned the brains of 32 people, 10 of whom had recovered from COVID-19, and 22 with long COVID. Of those with long COVID, half reported having brain fog. In these people, dye injected into the bloodstream leaked into their brains and pooled in regions that play roles in language, memory, mood and vision - in eight of 11 participants with brain fog, the dye tended to escape from blood vessels and enter brain tissue. Leaky blood brain barriers in the brain could explain the memory and concentration problems linked to long COVID. That barrier, tightly knit cells lining blood vessels, typically keeps riffraff out of the brain. If the barrier breaks down, bloodborne viruses, cells and other interlopers can sneak into the brain’s tissues and wreak havoc, says Nath, a neurologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. It’s too early to say definitively whether that’s happening in people with long COVID, but the new study provides evidence that “brain fog has a biological basis,” says Nath, who wasn’t involved with the work. Study coauthor Campbell remembers one of the first people scanned, someone with severe brain fog. Their temporal lobes, brain regions that sit behind the eyes, were “just flooded with this dye,” he says. Autopsies of people who have died from COVID-19 reveal barrier breakdowns, Nath and others have shown. In people recovered from COVID, the dye had trouble crossing the blood brain barrier. Likewise, in long COVID patients without brain fog, the dye mostly stayed put, confined within blood vessels. The new findings offer an opportunity to think about potential therapies, Nath says. Perhaps researchers can find a way to slow down the blood brain barrier’s breakdown - or reverse it. (Source: sciencenews)
United Kingdom
Thu 14 Mar 2024 Covid vaccines, including those from Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna, proved highly effective at preventing severe disease in the pandemic, but medicines regulators also recorded increases in some rare heart and clotting conditions. The latest, large study sought to investigate the overall impact of a Covid vaccination, given that infection with the virus itself is known to significantly raise the risk of heart failure and various other serious cardiovascular problems. Researchers analysed health records from more than 20 million people across the UK, Spain and Estonia and found consistent evidence that the jabs protected against serious cardiovascular complications of the disease. Writing in the journal Heart, the researchers describe how the adenovirus-based Covid vaccines produced by Oxford-AstraZeneca and Janssen, and the mRNA-based vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, were most protective against Covid-related heart failure and blood clots in the first month after contracting the virus. 'In that period, the risk of heart failure was 55% lower, and the risks of blood clots in the veins and arteries were down 78% and 47% respectively, compared with rates in unvaccinated people. Three to six months after infection, the risk of heart failure in vaccinated people was 39% lower than in unvaccinated people, with the risk of blood clots in the veins and arteries down 47% and 28% respectively. From six to 12 months post-infection, the risks of the same complications were 48%, 50% and 38% lower, respectively, for vaccinated people.' Covid vaccinations substantially reduce the risk of heart failure and potentially dangerous blood clots linked to the infection for up to a year, according to the study. The protective effect arises from the vaccines reducing the severity of the disease when people experience breakthrough infections, when the virus takes hold despite a person being vaccinated. The message overall is that if you are vaccinated, your risk of having post-Covid cardiovascular and thromboembolic complications is reduced quite dramatically, Prieto-Alhambra, a professor of pharmaco- and device epidemiology at the University of Oxford and a senior author on the study, said. (Source: theguardian)
Europe
15 Mar 2024 Closer during crises? A survey's respondents were interviewed in March/beginning of April 2020, again in July 2020, and finally in November 2022 to analyze whether a change in attachment to Europe occurred between the first and the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The results show that the emotive dimension of EU attachment changed over the course of these crises and are suggesting that far-reaching EU-level actions in case of crises create, rather than require, a perception of belonging to an EU-level community. (Source: tandfronline *)
* Taylor& Francis Online, originating in England.
Africa
Uganda
14 March 2024 The Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) has warned all headteachers and principals of both government and private education institutions in Kampala regarding an outbreak of conjunctivitis, commonly known as red eye disease, following reports of confirmed cases in several schools and educational facilities within the city. Conjunctivitis happens when the membrane covering the insides of your eyelids and the white part of your eye, called the conjunctiva, becomes inflamed. Inflammation of the conjunctiva causes the whites of your eyes to appear pink or red in colour. The most common pink eye symptoms include redness in one or both eyes, itchiness in one or both eyes, a gritty feeling, and discharge in one or both eyes that forms a crust during the night that may prevent your eye or eyes from opening in the morning. Affected persons may also experience tearing, sensitivity to light. In response to the outbreak, KCCA's health teams have advised schools to reinforce existing infection prevention measures. These measures include frequent handwashing with water and soap, avoiding touching or rubbing the eyes, refraining from shaking hands and maintaining close contact, as well as screening visitors entering the schools and institutions. (Source: allafrica / Nile Post - Kampala)
Atlantic Ocean
12 March 2024 High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI) has been in existence for decades but the world is currently in the grip of a major flare up, with the H5N1 strain of the virus causing the deaths of countless wild and domesticated birds. Antarctica and its outlying islands have escaped the worst due to their remoteness. But this situation is on the turn. Avian influenza had already infected other seabirds and mammals on the British Overseas Territory, but scientists report 10 penguins on South Georgia - gentoo and king penguins - have now fallen victim. The beaches on South Georgia, one of the world's great wildlife havens are famous for their spectacular aggregations - a million-plus individuals all jostling together to court, mate and bring up their young. Bird flu was first identified on South Georgia, in October 2023, in the large scavenging seabird known as the brown skua, with detections in kelp gulls shortly after. In January this year, cases were confirmed in elephant and fur seals. It's also spread to Antarctic terns and wandering albatrosses. The cases were confirmed in samples sent back to the UK to the International Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza at the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) laboratories in Weybridge. Two dead skuas infected with HPAI were recently picked up by Argentine scientists near their Primavera base on the continent's peninsula, so the virus is unquestionably moving south. The virus has already got to gentoos on the Falklands some 1,500km to the west, so it was probably only a matter of time before South Georgia's also became infected. Skuas winter around South America as do giant petrels and scientists think these birds are the vector that bought the disease into South Georgia. Skuas are constantly in amongst the penguin colonies - different penguin species, which on South Georgia include kings, gentoos, macaronis and chinstraps - scavenging and preying on eggs and chicks. Macaronis will spend much of the coming southern winter at sea, which will help them avoid infection. Kings and gentoos, however, will continue to roost on shore, leaving them open to further exposure. "Penguins live in very close proximity to each other, so that lends itself to the idea that they might spread the virus rapidly between each other. But we don't know how easily the virus can get into different penguin species, what sort of clinical disease it might cause and how rapidly it might spread between birds themselves," Dr Banyard, who leads the avian virology workgroup at the APHA, told. The breeding season is closing on the sub-Antarctic island so the immediate impacts are likely to be limited. But there'll be concern for next season when wildlife gathers again en masse. (Source: rnz * / BBC)
* Radio New Zealand
North America
United States
March 20, 2024 A simple skin biopsy test has shown a high accuracy rate in detecting an abnormal form of alpha-synuclein, the pathological hallmark of Parkinson’s disease, according to neurologists at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). In a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, results from the study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, validate this cutaneous method as a reliable and convenient tool to help physicians make more accurate diagnoses of Parkinson’s and the subgroup of neurodegenerative disorders known as synucleinopathies. Affecting an estimated 2.5 million people in the United States, the synucleinopathies include Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), multiple system atrophy (MSA), and pure autonomic failure (PAF). While the four progressive neurodegenerative diseases have varying prognoses and do not respond to the same therapies, they do share some overlapping clinical features such as tremors and cognitive changes. Additionally, all are characterized by the presence of an abnormal protein present in the nerve fibers in the skin called phosphorylated α-synuclein (P-SYN). In this investigation, titled the Synuclein-One Study, Gibbons, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and colleagues at 30 academic and community-based neurology practices enrolled 428 people, ages 40-99 years, with a clinical diagnosis of one of the four synucleinopathies based on clinical criteria and confirmed by an expert panel or were healthy control subjects with no history of neurodegenerative disease. Participants underwent three 3-millimeter skin punch biopsies taken from the neck, the knee, and the ankle. Among the participants with clinically confirmed Parkinson’s disease, 93 percent demonstrated a positive skin biopsy for P-SYN. Participants with DLB and MSA tested 96 percent and 98 percent positive, respectively. One hundred percent of participants with PAF were positive for the abnormal protein. Among the controls, just over 3 percent tested positive for P-SYN — an error rate the authors suspect may indicate some of the healthy controls are at risk for a synucleinopathy. “Each year, there are nearly 200,000 people in the U.S. who face a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, and related disorders. Too often patients experience delays in diagnosis or are misdiagnosed due to the complexity of these diseases. With a simple, minimally-invasive skin biopsy test, this blinded multicenter study demonstrated how we can more objectively identify the underlying pathology of synucleinopathies and offer better diagnostic answers and care for patients", said lead author Gibbons, a neurologist at BIDMC. “Parkinson’s disease and its subgroup of progressive neurodegenerative diseases show gradual progression, but alpha-synuclein is present in the skin even at the earliest stages. These are systemic disorders that impact the peripheral and central nervous systems in profound ways. “While we have been aware of the presence of alpha-synuclein in cutaneous nerves for many years, we were thrilled with the accuracy of this diagnostic test”, said senior author Freeman, director of the Center for Autonomic and Peripheral Nerve Disorders at BIDMC and professor of neurology at HMS. The team’s findings are built on earlier work by Freeman and Gibbons. The pair, together with immunohistochemist Wang, a research scientist at BIDMC and an assistant professor of neurology at HMS, have been focused on finding a reliable biomarker for synucleinopathies since 2009. In 2023, the BIDMC researchers demonstrated and published in the journal Neurology that this technique could reliably distinguish between Parkinson’s and MSA, a differentiation that is critical to properly managing the diseases that appear clinically similar but have very different prognoses. Developing the research around alpha-synuclein in the skin is part of a licensing collaboration with CND Life Sciences, a neurodiagnostics company. The authors anticipate that this research will play a role in accelerating drug development for synucleinopathies. (Source: news.harvard *)
* The Harvard Gazette
(Tuesday), March 19, 2024 Numerous lawmakers have scrutinized the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sen. Johnson has called on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to explain why dozens of pages of material on the origins of COVID-19 are “still hidden under HHS’s heavy redactions.” He has long been scrutinizing government health agencies for their actions revolving around the outbreak. Johnson (R-Wis.) has been investigating various government health agencies’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic as the ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He previously demanded the trove of documents from HHS Secretary Becerra and Dr. Fauci back in 2021 as part of a tranche of documents on the global pandemic. Sen. Johnson is following up on the request after a testy hearing with Becerra last week. “It is well past time for HHS to meet its legal obligation and produce, without redactions, the approximately 50 pages of priority records my office identified in 2021. You previously testified that I am ‘absolutely entitled’ to that information,” Johnson wrote in a Friday letter to Becerra. In September 2021, the senator’s team asked for an unredacted review of 400 pages of priority records. After Johnson’s initial request in 2021, the department coughed up roughly 4,000 pages worth of material that contained some redactions, according to his letter. Now that request has been reduced to 50 pages. This past Thursday, Johnson pressed Becerra about why the department hadn’t furnished the outstanding documents during a Senate Finance Committee hearing. 'It is an accommodation process where we try to make sure that we fulfill the request as best we can without undermining national security, confidentiality,' Becerra explained at the time. Johnson was dissatisfied with that response and stressed to the HHS secretary, “We fund the agencies. We pay their salaries. That data should be made available to the American public.” The Wisconsin Republican demanded the material by the week of April 8, and he is seeking a phone call or meeting with Becerra by that same time to discuss HHS’ compliance with the 2021 request. The senator wants HHS to flag specific privileges it feels preclude the removal of redactions and to furnish the material uncensored where it can’t identify a legitimate privilege. (Source: nypost *)
* The New York Post
South America
Brazil
March 19, 2024 Today, former Brazilian President Bolsonaro, who governed from 2019 to 2022, was formally accused for first time over alleged falsification of his COVID-19 vaccination status, with more allegations potentially in store. Police accuse Bolsonaro and his aides of tampering with the health ministry’s database shortly before he traveled to the U.S. in December 2022, two months after he lost his reelection bid to da Silva. Bolsonaro needed a certificate of vaccination to enter the U.S., where he remained for the final days of his term and the first months of Lula’s term. The former president has repeatedly said he has never taken a COVID-19 vaccine. Bolsonaro denied any wrongdoing during questioning in May 2023. Brazil’s Supreme Court has already seized Bolsonaro’s passport. During the pandemic, Bolsonaro was one of the few world leaders who railed against the vaccine. He openly flouted health restrictions and encouraged other Brazilians to follow his example. His administration ignored several offers from pharmaceutical company Pfizer to sell Brazil tens of millions of shots in 2020, and he openly criticized a move by Sao Paulo state’s governor to buy vaccines from Chinese company Sinovac when no other doses were available. The federal police indictment released by the Supreme Court alleged that Bolsonaro and 16 others inserted false information into a public health database to make it appear as though the then-president, his 12-year-old daughter and several others in his circle had received the COVID-19 vaccine. Police detective Shor, who signed the indictment, said in his report that Bolsonaro and his aides changed their vaccination records in order to 'issue their respective (vaccination) certificates and use them to cheat current health restrictions.' 'The investigation found several false insertions between November 2021 and December 2022, and also many actions of using fraudulent documents,' Shor added. If convicted for falsifying health data, the 68-year-old politician could spend up to 12 years behind bars or as little as two years, according to legal analyst Costa. The maximum jail time for a charge of criminal association is four years, he said. Brazil’s prosecutor-general’s office will have the final say on whether to use the indictment to file charges against Bolsonaro at the Supreme Court. The indictment sheds new light on a Senate committee inquiry that ended in October 2021 with a recommendation for nine criminal charges against Bolsonaro alleging that he mismanaged the pandemic. Then prosecutor-general Aras, who was widely seen as a Bolsonaro ally, declined to move the case forward. Bolsonaro retains staunch allegiance among his political base, as shown by an outpouring of support last month, when an estimated 185,000 people clogged Sao Paulo’s main boulevard to decry what they - and the former president - characterize as political persecution. Brazil’s top electoral court has already ruled Bolsonaro ineligible to run for office until 2030, on the grounds that he abused his power during the 2022 campaign and cast unfounded doubts on the country’s electronic voting system. Another investigation relates to Bolsonaro’s involvement in the Jan. 8, 2023, uprising in the capital of Brasilia, soon after Lula took power. The uprising resembled the U.S. Capitol riot in Washington two years prior. He has denied wrongdoing in both cases. Hoffmann, chairwoman of the Workers’ Party, whose candidate defeated Bolsonaro, celebrated his indictment on social media: 'What is up now, Big Coward? Are you going to face this or run away to Miami?' Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Wajngarten, called his client’s indictment “absurd” and said he did not have access to it. “When he was president, he was completely exempted from showing any kind of certificate on his trips. This is political persecution and an attempt to void the enormous political capital that has only grown,” Wajngarten said. (Source: apnews *)
* Associated Press
18 March 2024 Unprecedented outbreak of dengue surges across Brazil - more than 1.5 million people have already caught the virus so far this year. The nation battles an epidemic that is straining resources and spreading well beyond the areas traditionally affected. The patients in places like Brasilia, the capital of the country, are suffering, they wait for six hours to be attended to. “There are two epidemics at the same time,” said Prof Ribas Freitas, Professor of Epidemiology at São Leopoldo Mandic School of Medicine, Campinas. He is concerned that another mosquito-borne disease from the same family of arboviruses - chikungunya - being misdiagnosed in many areas. “The complications are very different … and if doctors don’t know if a patient has dengue or chikungunya, they can interpret complications incorrectly,” he says. Epidemiologists are expecting the number of dengue cases to more than double the previous record - 4.5 million cases were reported in 2023 and hospitals were overrun. The control of mosquitoes right now is not too efficient, because they are flying with the virus. The mosquito control is more efficient when you do it before they hatch, in November, December, to avoid an epidemic even starting. Authorities have started to roll out the Qdenga vaccine developed by the Japanese company Takeda, which has an overall efficacy of 61.2 per cent. A limited vaccination campaign has been launched, but it is unlikely to be enough to halt the outbreak. Brazil – home to 214 million – has secured only enough doses to vaccinate 3.3 million people this year. To start with, just 521 cities will receive the vaccine, in a campaign targeting 10 and 11 year olds. Scientists at Brazil’s Butantan Institute in São Paulo are also working on a promising shot, which had an 80 per cent efficacy against symptomatic cases after one dose in a recent trial, but it is unlikely to be ready for widespread distribution until at least 2025. The World Mosquito Program has released mosquitoes infected with the naturally occurring Wolbachia bacteria, which prevents the Aedes aegypti from being able to transmit dengue, in five areas. The results are promising: Science reported that in Niterói, where Wolbachia has been deployed since 2015, just 58 confirmed cases have been reported this year. Nearby Rio de Janeiro is 14 times bigger, but has seen 161 times more cases, with 9,355 detected since January. The initiative will be expanded to six new Brazilian cities in the coming months, but scaling up the programme nationwide will be slow. The virus, spread by mosquitoes, has already ripped through much of South America and the Caribbean. Reported cases are close to two million so far this year, making it the seventh worst outbreak since 2000. In the first two months of this year alone, Peru was forced to declare a health emergency across much of the country, Paraguay registered more than five times the typical number of suspected cases for the period (almost 100,000), and vast swarms of mosquitoes coursed through Argentina. South America and the Caribbean reported more than one million cases only twice in the 10 years between 2000 and 2009. Major epidemics typically occur cyclically – every three to five years. But infections have dropped below one million only twice since 2015. Globally, data on dengue transmission remains patchy, partly because cases are generally mild and can be misdiagnosed. According to the World Health Organization, some 400 million people are infected with the virus – dubbed ‘breakbone fever’ because severe joint pain can be one of the symptoms – each year, while at least 100 million become ill. Although the death rate is generally low, the virus exacts a heavy toll on productivity and health systems, with some 500,000 people hospitalised annually and many more experiencing symptoms including fatigue and brain fog that can last for weeks. (Source: telegraph)
Globalization
March 2024 "Recent changes in patterns of mammal infection with highly pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) virus worldwide" / Plaza - Gamarra-Toledo - Euguí - Lambertucci. Abstract: "We reviewed information about mammals naturally infected by highly pathogenic avian influenza A virus subtype H5N1 during 2 periods: the current panzootic (2020–2023) and previous waves of infection (2003–2019). In the current panzootic, 26 countries have reported >48 mammal species infected by H5N1 virus; in some cases, the virus has affected thousands of individual animals. The geographic area and the number of species affected by the current event are considerably larger than in previous waves of infection. The most plausible source of mammal infection in both periods appears to be close contact with infected birds, including their ingestion. Some studies, especially in the current panzootic, suggest that mammal-to-mammal transmission might be responsible for some infections; some mutations found could help this avian pathogen replicate in mammals. H5N1 virus may be changing and adapting to infect mammals. Continuous surveillance is essential to mitigate the risk for a global pandemic". (Source: cdc.gov *): https://tinyurl.com/pfkae9nu
* Emerging Infectious Diseases / Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
11 March 2024 The next pandemic? It's already here for Earth's wildlife. "When people ask me* what I think the next pandemic will be I often say that we are in the midst of one - it's just afflicting a great many species more than ours. I am referring to the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1), otherwise known as bird flu, which has killed millions of birds and unknown numbers of mammals, particularly during the past three years. This is the strain that emerged in domestic geese in China in 1997 and quickly jumped to humans in south-east Asia with a mortality rate of around 40-50%. My research group encountered the virus when it killed a mammal, an endangered Owston's palm civet, in a captive breeding programme in Cuc Phuong National Park Vietnam in 2005. How these animals caught bird flu was never confirmed. Their diet is mainly earthworms, so they had not been infected by eating diseased poultry like many captive tigers in the region. This discovery prompted us to collate all confirmed reports of fatal infection with bird flu to assess just how broad a threat to wildlife this virus might pose". Two decades on, bird flu is killing species from the high Arctic to mainland Antarctica. Mammals known to be susceptible to bird flu during the early 2000s included primates, rodents, pigs and rabbits. Large carnivores such as Bengal tigers and clouded leopards were reported to have been killed, as well as domestic cats. Until December 2005, most confirmed infections had been found in a few zoos and rescue centres in Thailand and Cambodia. In 2006 nearly half (48%) of all the different groups of birds (known to taxonomists as "orders") contained a species in which a fatal infection of bird flu had been reported. These 13 orders comprised 84% of all bird species. The strains of H5N1 circulating were probably highly pathogenic to all bird orders. The list of confirmed infected species included those that were globally threatened. Important habitats, such as Vietnam's Mekong delta, lay close to reported poultry outbreaks. "Our 2006 paper showed the ease with which this virus crossed species barriers and suggested it might one day produce a pandemic-scale threat to global biodiversity". In the past couple of years, bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe and infiltrated North and South America, killing millions of poultry and a variety of bird and mammal species. A recent paper found that 26 countries have reported at least 48 mammal species that have died from the virus since 2020, when the latest increase in reported infections started. A wide range of scavenging and predatory mammals that live on land are now confirmed to be susceptible, including mountain lions, lynx, brown, black and polar bears. Not even the ocean is safe. Since 2020, 13 species of aquatic mammal have succumbed, including American sea lions, porpoises and dolphins, often dying in their thousands in South America. The UK alone has lost over 75% of its great skuas and seen a 25% decline in northern gannets. Recent declines in sandwich terns (35%) and common terns (42%) were also largely driven by the virus. Scientists haven't managed to completely sequence the virus in all affected species. We know it can already infect humans - one or more genetic mutations may make it more infectious. Between January 1 2003 and December 21 2023, 882 cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus were reported from 23 countries, of which 461 (52%) were fatal. Of these fatal cases, more than half were in Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Laos. Poultry-to-human infections were first recorded in Cambodia in December 2003. Intermittent cases were reported until 2014, followed by a gap until 2023, yielding 41 deaths from 64 cases. The subtype of H5N1 virus responsible has been detected in poultry in Cambodia since 2014. In the early 2000s, the H5N1 virus circulating had a high human mortality rate, so it is worrying that we are now starting to see people dying after contact with poultry again. It's not just H5 subtypes of bird flu that concern humans. The H10N1 virus was originally isolated from wild birds in South Korea, but has also been reported in samples from China and Mongolia. Recent research found that these particular virus subtypes may be able to jump to humans after they were found to be pathogenic in laboratory mice and ferrets. The first person who was confirmed to be infected with H10N5 died in China on January 27 2024, but this patient was also suffering from seasonal flu (H3N2). They had been exposed to live poultry which also tested positive for H10N5. Species already threatened with extinction are among those which have died due to bird flu in the past three years. The first deaths from the virus in mainland Antarctica have just been confirmed in skuas, highlighting a looming threat to penguin colonies whose eggs and chicks skuas prey on. Humboldt penguins have already been killed by the virus in Chile. How can we stem this tsunami of H5N1 and other avian influenzas? Completely overhaul poultry production on a global scale. Make farms self-sufficient in rearing eggs and chicks instead of exporting them internationally. The trend towards megafarms containing over a million birds must be stopped in its tracks. To prevent the worst outcomes for this virus, we must revisit its primary source: the incubator of intensive poultry farms. (Source: allafrica / "Republished from The Conversation Africa - Johannesburg")
* by Bell, a conservation biologist who studies emerging infectious diseases, Professor of Conservation Biology, University of East Anglia.
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