FAO Deputy Director-General Godfrey Magwenzi, MS, said the spread of H5N1 is unprecedented, "leading to serious impacts on food security and food supply in countries, including loss of valuable nutrition, rural jobs and income, shocks to local economies, and of course increasing costs to consumers."
The FAO said the past 4 years has seen a major shift in global spread of H5N1 and its impacts. It added that losses extend to large numbers of wild birds, which poses a threat to biodiversity, with at least 300 new species affected by H5N1 since 2021. FAO scientists also acknowledged the complex challenges animal health workers and farmers face in protecting poultry production while protecting livelihoods and the food supply.
Officials urged countries to take several steps, including increased surveillance, improved lab capacity, enhanced biosecurity practices, strengthened outbreak response, and consideration of a possible role for vaccination.
Raw food, cat-to-cat spread suspected in NYC cat illnesses
Following a recent announcement on the detection of two H5 avian flu infections in cats from separate households, New York City Health Department (NYC Health) officials on March 15 announced more details into the investigation, including that the illnesses appear to be linked to a brand of raw cat food and that a third illness in a cat is suspected.
NYC Health urged consumers to avoid feeding their cats food from the raw pet food company Savage Cat Food. Cats from two separate households, and possibly a third, contracted avian flu and have been linked to raw-poultry pet food from Savage Cat Food.
Test results in raw chicken food packets are pending for the first cat that died from H5N1. Tests on a second cat that died match the virus found in food from the same lot as the first cat. The second cat, however, did not eat the food but was exposed to a sick cat that ate the food. The cat with the suspected infection has since recovered and was not tested.
The company, based in El Cajon, California, on March 15 voluntarily recalled one lot of its raw chicken food for cats due to potential H5N1 contamination. The products were distributed in California, Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
Latest US poultry, cattle detections
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today confirmed more H5N1 detections in poultry in four states, one involving an outbreak at a commercial turkey farm in Lawrence County, Illinois, that has 14,500 birds.
In New Jersey, the virus turned up at three live-bird markets and a backyard farm. The virus also struck a backyard flock in Maryland and another live-bird market in Pennsylvania.
APHIS also confirmed one more H5N1 detection in dairy cattle, which involves a herd in California, raising the national total to 986 across 17 states, 755 of them in California.
Studies shed light on bovine strain pathogenicity, baloxavir benefits
In new research developments, a team based at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, compared the virus characteristics of the bovine H5N1 strain with an older H5N1 strain collected from a wild bird in Mongolia in 2005. The findings appear in Scientific Reports.
The investigators conducted their experiments using mice and panels of human lung cells. The cattle H5N1 strain showed superior growth and more rapid replication in the human lung cells. In mice, the bovine strain showed greater pathogenicity, rapid lung pathology, high virus titers in the brain, and high mortality following challenge via different infection routes.
"In summary, this study demonstrates the profound pathogenicity and suggests a potential innate immune escape mechanism of the H5N1 virus isolated from a dairy cow in Texas," the authors wrote.
In a second study, a team from St. Jude Children's Hospital who used a mouse model to assess the efficacy of Food and Drug Administration–approved antiviral drugs after the animals received a lethal intranasal or ocular challenge with H5N1-infected milk. The team published its findings today in Nature Microbiology.
The researchers found better outcomes for baloxavir treatment than for oseltamivir, seeing improvements with survival and virus dissemination.
They said the findings support consideration of baloxavir, in addition to neuraminidase inhibitors, for the treatment of severe infections and for pandemic preparedness stockpiling.
Source : umn.edu