Tag: birds

Avian Flu Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
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Here’s a look at avian flu.

Avian influenza, also called avian flu or bird flu, is an illness that usually affects only birds.

There are many different strains of avian flu: 16 H subtypes and 9 N subtypes. Only those labeled H5, H7 and H10 have caused deaths in humans.

The most commonly seen and most deadly form of the virus is called “Influenza A (H5N1),” or the “H5N1 virus.”

Most cases of human bird flu infections are due to contact with infected poultry or surfaces that are contaminated with infected bird excretions: saliva, nasal secretions or feces.

Symptoms of avian flu include fever, cough, sore throat and sometimes severe respiratory diseases and pneumonia.

The CDC recommends oral oseltamivir (brand name: Tamiflu), inhaled zanamivir (brand name: Relenza) and intravenous permavir (brand name: Rapivab) for the treatment of human illness associated with avian flu.

The mortality rate is close to 60% for infected humans.

Early 1900s –The avian flu is first identified in Italy.

1961 – The H5N1 strain is isolated in birds in South Africa.

December 1983 – Chickens in Pennsylvania and Virginia are exposed to the avian flu and more than five million birds are killed to stop the disease from spreading.

1997 – Eighteen people are infected by the H5N1 strain in Hong Kong, six die. These are the first documented cases of human infection. Hong Kong destroys its entire poultry population, 1.5 million birds.

1999 – Two children in Hong Kong are infected by the H9N2 strain.

February 2003 – Eighty-four people in the Netherlands are affected by the H7N7 strain of the virus, one dies.

February 7, 2004 – Twelve thousand chickens are killed in Kent County, Delaware, after they are found to be infected with the H7 virus.

October 7, 2005 – The avian flu reaches Europe. Romanian officials quarantine a village of about 30 people after three dead ducks there test positive for bird flu.

November 12, 2005 – A one-year-old boy in Thailand tests positive for the H5N1 strain of avian influenza.

November 16, 2005 – The World Health Organization confirms two human cases of bird flu in China, including a female poultry worker who died from the H5N1 strain.

November 17, 2005 – Two deaths are confirmed in Indonesia from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza.

January 1, 2006 – A Turkish teenager dies of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in Istanbul, and later that week, two of his sisters die.

January 17, 2006 – A 15-year-old girl from northern Iraq dies after contracting bird flu.

February 20, 2006 – Vietnam becomes the first country to successfully contain the disease. A country is considered disease-free when no new cases are reported in 21 days.

March 12, 2006 – Officials in Cameroon confirm cases of the H5N1 strain. The avian flu has now reached four African countries.

March 13, 2006 – The avian flu is confirmed by officials in Myanmar.

May 11, 2006 – Djibouti announces its first cases of H5N1 – several birds and one human.

December 20, 2011 – The US Department of Health and Human Services releases a statement saying that the government is urging scientific journals to omit details from research they intend to publish on the transfer of H5N1 among mammals. There is concern that the information could be misused by terrorists.

July 31, 2012 – Scientists announce that H3N8, a new strain of avian flu, caused the death of more than 160 baby seals in New England in 2011.

March 31, 2013 – Chinese authorities report the first human cases of infection of avian flu H7N9 to the World Health Organization. H7N9 has not previously been detected in humans.

December 6, 2013 – A 73-year-old woman infected with H10N8 dies in China, the first human fatality from this strain.

January 8, 2014 – Canadian health officials confirm that a resident from Alberta has died from H5N1 avian flu, the first case of the virus in North America. It is also the first case of H5N1 infection ever imported by a traveler into a country where the virus is not present in poultry.

April 20, 2015 – Officials say more than five million hens will be euthanized after bird flu was detected at a commercial laying facility in northwest Iowa. According to the US Department of Agriculture, close to eight million cases of bird flu have been detected in 13 states since December. Health officials say there is little to no risk for transmission to humans with respect to H5N2. No human infections with the virus have ever been detected.

January 15, 2016 – The US Department of Agriculture confirms that a commercial turkey farm in Dubois County, Indiana, has tested positive for the H7N8 strain of avian influenza.

January 24, 2017 – Britain’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs releases a statement confirming that a case of H5N8 avian flu has been detected in a flock of farmed breeding pheasants in Preston, UK. The flock is estimated to contain around 10,000 birds. The statement adds that a number of those birds have died, and the remaining live birds at the premises are being “humanely” killed because of the disease.

February 12, 2017 – A number of provinces in China have shut down their live poultry markets to prevent the spread of avian flu after a surge in the number of infections from the H7N9 strain. At least six provinces have reported human cases of H7N9 influenza this year, according to Chinese state media, Xinhua.

March 5-7, 2017 – The USDA confirms that a commercial chicken farm in Tennessee has tested positive for the H7N9 strain of avian flu, but says it is genetically different from the H7N9 lineage out of China. The 73,500-bird flock in Lincoln County will be euthanized, according to Tyson Foods.

February 14, 2018 – Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection announces that a 68-year-old woman has been treated for the H7N4 strain. This is the first case of this strain in a human.

June 5, 2019 – Since 2013 there have been 1,568 confirmed human cases and 616 deaths worldwide from the H7N9 strain of avian flu, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

December 2019 – The United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs confirms that a case of H5N1 avian flu has been detected at a poultry farm in Suffolk. 27,000 birds are humanely killed because of the disease.

April 9, 2020 – The USDA confirms that a commercial turkey flock in Chesterfield County, South Carolina has tested positive for the H7N3 strain of avian flu.

January 2021 – India culls tens of thousands of poultry birds after avian influenza is detected in ducks, crows and wild geese in at least a dozen locations across the country.

February 18, 2021 – Russian authorities notify WHO that they have detected H5N8 in humans. “If confirmed, this would be the first time H5N8 has infected people,” a WHO Europe spokesperson says in a statement.

June 1, 2021 – China’s National Health Commission announces the first human case of H10N3.

February 2022 – The USDA confirms that wild birds and domestic poultry in the United States have tested positive for the H5N1 strain of avian flu. By May 17, 2023, the CDC reports there are 47 states with poultry outbreaks.

April 26, 2022 – China’s National Health Commission announces the first human case of H3N8.

April 28, 2022 – The CDC announces a case of H5 bird flu has been confirmed in a man in Colorado.

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US government is testing avian flu vaccines for birds, but ending the historic outbreak isn’t that simple | CNN

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CNN
 — 

The United States is facing what some experts are calling “a new era for bird flu.”

Since January 2022, the country has been battling the biggest outbreak yet of highly pathogenic avian influenza in wildlife. The virus is a major threat to commercial and backyard flocks, and it has started to show up in hundreds of mammals, including a handful of pet cats.

The risk to humans is low; there has been only one human case of this virus in the US since the outbreak began, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and nine cases globally, mostly among people who work with birds. The CDC says there are trials underway of vaccines that could be used to protect humans in case the virus changes and becomes more of a threat.

Separately, the US Department of Agriculture, the US National Poultry Research Center and labs at a handful of American universities have been experimenting with vaccine candidates to be used in birds.

The USDA’s Agriculture Research Service started trials of four vaccine candidates for animals in April and expects to have initial data on a single-dose vaccine available this month. A two-dose vaccine challenge study – in which animals are exposed to the virus to see how well the vaccine works – should produce results in June.

If the animal vaccines look to be protective, the USDA’s next step would be to work with manufacturers on whether it would be feasible to use them.

One manufacturer, Zoetis, announced April 5 the development of a vaccine geared toward currently circulating virus strains. The company says it would take about a year to get to the distribution stage in the US.

Vaccines are already available in other countries, including China, Egypt, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico and Vietnam, and some nations are vaccinating their commercial flocks.

However, in the United States, not all poultry experts are ready to use a vaccine, even if one becomes available – at least, not yet. Instead, their focus remains on eradicating the virus.

As of April 26, the CDC says, nearly 58.8 million poultry have been affected by avian flu since January 2022. The virus has been detected in at least 6,737 wild birds, and the number is likely to be much higher. There have been poultry outbreaks in 47 states.

Although this is the worst outbreak in history, improved biosecurity measures have vastly reduced the number of cases in the commercial sector, according to the USDA. When the outbreak began in early 2022, there were 51 detections among commercial poultry. In March 2023, there were only seven.

The USDA says close surveillance work among its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and state and industry partners led to the reduction in cases.

Generally, there ares two ways of confronting this kind of highly infectious disease in poultry, according to Rodrigo Gallardo, a professor in poultry medicine and a specialist in avian virology at the University of California, Davis.

“One of them is through vaccination action. And then the other one is through eradication,” he said.

In the United States, the latter is the approach for now, Gallardo said.

If farmers detect even a single case in a flock, they will put down the birds right away.

“The virus keeps replicating and amplifying if the birds are alive, so the only way of stopping the replication and limiting the dissemination is by depopulation,” Gallardo said.

Tom Super, the senior vice president for communications for the National Chicken Council, the national trade association for the US broiler chicken industry, said in an email to CNN that although it supports the ongoing discussions about a vaccination program, “currently we support the eradication policy of APHIS and believe that right now this is the best approach at eliminating [bird flu] in the U.S.”

The US Poultry and Egg Association said it’s “certainly a topic of discussion,” but the organization doesn’t have a position on implementing a vaccination program.

A vaccination program comes with several complications, Gallardo said. Vaccinated birds would be protected, but with this highly infectious disease, they still could shed some virus that could infect unprotected birds.

“So vaccination, in that case, creates amplification if it is not done right,” Gallardo said.

Plus, it’s difficult to detect the disease in vaccinated birds. Birds that are vaccinated don’t always show signs if they’re sick, so it would be hard to know what birds to keep separate from the others. Tests also have a hard time telling the difference between antibodies generated by vaccination and antibodies from an infection.

“If you’re not able to diagnose it, it might spread more than what it would do if you are able to diagnose it and eradicate it,” Gallardo said.

Countries that have chosen the vaccination route see more endemic strains develop, meaning the virus is never really totally wiped out.

“This is a very variable virus, and if you don’t update the vaccine that you’re applying to meet the change in the virus, then you won’t be able to completely protect the birds. Partial protection means more birds will be spreading the virus,” Gallardo said.

A vaccine has never been used against highly pathogenic avian influenza in the US, according to the USDA. The agency created a vaccine after an outbreak in 2014 and 2015, but that involved a different strain, so it wouldn’t work on the latest version of the virus.

The logistics of a vaccine like this are difficult, said Dr. Yuko Sato, an associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University.

“You have to make sure that the new vaccine will protect against this current virus and hope that it doesn’t mutate or change so that the vaccine will continue to be protective,” Sato said.

“The vaccine is not a silver bullet. This is not going to prevent infection of the birds, so in order to have an exit strategy as the country, you would have to make sure that if you vaccinate, if you still have positive birds, you have to be able to make sure that you could stamp out the virus. Otherwise, we’ll never be looking at eradicating the virus from the United States.”

Another concern: Birds are a big business in the US.

The US has the largest poultry industry in the world, with 294,000 poultry farms. The market size for chicken and turkey meat production alone for 2023 is projected to generate $57.8 billion, according to market analysis firm IbisWorld.

Bird flu has hurt business in the US, but it could do so in a bigger way if the nation vaccinates poultry, according to the National Chicken Council.

“The National Chicken Council does not support the use of a vaccine for [bird flu] for a variety of reasons – the primary one being trade. Most countries, including the US, do not recognize countries that vaccinate as free of [bird flu] due to concerns that vaccines can mask the presence of the disease. Therefore, they do not accept exports from countries that do vaccinate,” Super wrote in his email.

The US broiler industry is the second largest exporter of chicken in the world. It exports about 18% of the chicken meat produced in the United States, valued at more than $5 billion annually.

“If we start vaccinating for [bird flu] in the U.S., the broiler industry will lose our ability to export which will have a significant impact on the industry – while costing billions and billions of dollars to the U.S. economy every year,” Super said.

With the way the disease is spreading, scientists would also probably have to vaccinate wildlife – which is nearly impossible.

Of the birds affected in this outbreak, about 76% are commercial egg-laying hens, 17% are turkeys, and only 5% are broilers, the chickens used for meat, Super said. The rest of the cases have been among ducks, backyard chickens and game birds.

“So the U.S. poultry sector that least needs a vaccine would have the most to risk from using one,” he said.

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Fossilized eggs crack open the mysteries of the past | CNN

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Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

Eggs have been laid on land by birds, reptiles, dinosaurs and a few oddball mammals for more than 200 million years.

And humans have been using some of these eggs as a nutritious source of food, and their shells as bowls, bottles and jewelry for most of our history on the planet.

Though they’ve often been overshadowed by skeletons and bones, fossilized eggshells are a fascinating source of information, illuminating the behavior and diet of ancient creatures, detailing changes in climate and revealing how our prehistoric relatives lived and communicated.

This Easter, here are six surprising things eggs have revealed about the past.

Did dinosaur blood run cold, like a lizard, or warm, like a bird? It’s a topic that’s long divided paleontologists.

An analysis of fossilized dinosaur egg shells suggests it’s the latter. By looking at the order of oxygen and carbon atoms in the fossilized egg shells, researchers were able to calculate a dinosaur mom’s internal body temperature. It’s a process called “clumped isotope paleothermometry.”

“Eggs, because they are formed inside dinosaurs, act like ancient thermometers,” said Pincelli Hull, an assistant professor at Yale University’s department of geology and geophysics, and a coauthor of the study, which published in 2020.

Hull and her colleagues found that the samples they tested suggested dinosaurs’ body temperatures were warmer than their surroundings would have been.

The research indicates that unlike reptiles, which rely on heat from the environment, dinosaurs were capable of internally generating heat – more like birds.

A study of fossilized eggshells revealed humans may have been hatching and raising cassowaries for more than 18,000 years.

You might think that chickens—or even ducks or turkeys—were the earliest birds to be domesticated by humans.

However, eggshell fragments found at two prehistoric sites in Papua New Guinea suggest that humans may have been raising cassowaries—often described as the world’s most dangerous birds because of a daggerlike claw they have on each foot—as early as 18,000 years ago.

Territorial, aggressive and often compared to a dinosaur in looks, the bird is a surprising candidate for domestication. But a study of more than 1,000 fossilized Papua New Guinea eggshell fragments has suggested the birds were deliberately hatched.

To reach their conclusions, the researchers first studied the eggshells of living birds, including turkeys, emus and ostriches. The insides of the eggshells change as the developing chicks get calcium from the eggshell. Using high-resolution 3D images and inspecting the inside of the eggs, the researchers were able to build a model of what the eggs looked like during different stages of incubation.

The scientists tested their model on modern emu and ostrich eggs before applying it to the fossilized eggshell fragments found in New Guinea. The team found that most of the eggshells found at the sites were all near maturity—suggesting they were hatched, not eaten.

The first oviraptor fossil—from a family of dinosaurs with parrotlike beaks—was discovered in Mongolia in the 1920s, lying near a nest of eggs thought to belong to a rival. Paleontologists at the time assumed that the animal had died while attempting to plunder the nest and named the creature “egg thief.”

It wasn’t until the 1990s that its reputation was restored when another discovery revealed that the eggs were its own. Subsequent finds, including an oviraptosaur hunched over 24 eggs made public last year, have revealed that this particular type of dinosaur was a doting parent.

At least seven of the 24 eggs preserved the bones of partial embryos found inside; it was the first time a fossil had preserved this level of detail. These embryos were at a late stage of development, and the close proximity of the parent confirmed that this dinosaur really did incubate its nest like its modern bird cousins.

The neat layout of oviraptor nests also suggested that they were brooders that sat upon eggs to hatch them—even giant oviraptors that weighed 1,500 kilograms (3,307 pounds) and laid half-meter long eggs, said Darla Zelenitsky, a dinosaur egg expert and associate professor in the department of geoscience at the University of Calgary in Canada.

“These fossils also show very precisely arranged eggs, stacked in rings, probably optimized for sitting on the eggs,” she explained.

The 2-meter-wide (6.6-foot-wide) nests of giant oviraptors were a slightly modified shape to stop them from being crushed, she added.

Dinosaurs eggs—including one with a perfectly preserved baby dinosaur curled up inside—increasingly show that birds inherited many characteristics from dinosaurs. Not all dinosaurs, however, were caring parents.

Pores on the surface of eggs allow the diffusion of water, oxygen and carbon dioxide, and the orientation, density and number of pores on the eggs of living animals can reveal whether they are laid in open nests or underground. Applying this knowledge to fossilized dinosaur eggs has shed light on their nesting behavior.

Analysis suggests that many dinosaurs, including hulking plant-eating sauropods, laid their eggs underground in burrows, more like reptiles.

A string of modern ostrich eggshell beads from eastern Africa is shown.

Ostrich eggshells are found in archaeological dig sites throughout Africa. Early humans used the large eggs as water bottles and, for tens of thousands of years, ancient humans took the remains and fashioned them into decorative beads that are still made today.

These beads have been found all over Africa—including in areas where ostriches never lived – sparking the question of how they got there.

The answer is hidden in the eggs’ geochemistry. Researchers looked at the signatures of different isotopes or variants of the element strontium in the beads—these vary depending on where the ostriches would have fed before laying the eggs.

Older rock formations including granite are found to have more strontium than younger rocks like basalt, and this is reflected in the vegetation that grows around them.

The geochemistry of the beads showed they traveled long distances. They were traded or exchanged in what was described as an early social network.

Eggs are a big part of our diet today – something that was also true in the Stone Age.

In fact, ancient Australians’ appetite for the eggs laid by the 2-meter-tall (6-foot-tall) Genyornis could have been one significant reason why the large, flightless birds went extinct 47,000 years ago.

Burn patterns on eggshell fragments of the giant bird found at around 200 sites across Australia, were created by humans discarding eggshell in and around makeshift fires, presumably made to cook the eggs.

Chemical signatures of nitrogen and carbon isotopes in fossilized egg shells can also track vegetation changes, gleaning information about past changes in climate, which can reveal ecological shifts that could impact the survival of these species over time.

A study of emu eggshells found across Australia over a 100,000-year time period do not show a massive shift in climate that researchers believe could have led to the extinction of Genyornis.

This suggested that the extinction of these giant birds was caused by humans, not ecological changes, the study said.

Fossilized penguin, ostrich and emu eggshells have revealed what the climate was like in the ancient Antarctic, South Africa and Australia. More recent egg collections are revealing how the current climate crisis is changing the natural world today.

By comparing birds’ eggs collected during the Victorian era and modern eggs held by the Field Museum and other institutions, researchers found that several bird species in the Chicago area nest and lay eggs almost a full month earlier now than they did a century ago.

Of the 72 species documented in the data, a third have been nesting earlier and earlier, the team found. Birds that changed their nesting habits laid eggs around 25 days sooner, on average.

Similar patterns are seen in insects, which many birds eat, and plants, suggesting that climate change is already changing ecosystems, the authors of the study said.

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Bird flu cases are expected to surge as birds migrate in coming weeks

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A bald eagle infected with avian flu undergoes treatment at The Raptor Center, University of Minnesota

Victoria Hall

A record outbreak of avian flu has been devastating poultry farms and birds that flock together on shorelines since 2021, raising new concerns that the virus could become endemic in wild birds. There have already been reports of spillover to other species, including foxes in England, grizzly bears in the US and farmed mink in Spain. And an 11-year-old girl in Cambodia died from an avian flu infection. All of this is stoking fears that we may be on the verge of another pandemic should this virus adapt to more easily infect humans.

With billions of migratory birds now taking flight from their southern wintering grounds to make cross-globe journeys, experts are bracing for a fresh wave of infections.

“This year’s outbreak is causing severe illness and death in much larger numbers than we’ve seen in the past,” says Autumn-Lynn Harrison at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in Washington DC. “Although bird flu has had a series of outbreaks in the past, wild birds are typically asymptomatic – they don’t usually show these high numbers of symptoms or even death.”

Last summer, Harrison was working with shorebirds in Alaska called parasitic jaegers (Stercorarius parasiticus) and Arctic terns (sterna paradisaea) – two of the world’s furthest-migrating species, which travel from the Arctic circle down to South America and Antarctica every year. At her field site, dead birds from both species tested positive for avian flu, or H5N1. “It was the first time I saw some of these predatory seabirds just as random carcasses on the tundra,” says Harrison. She tagged some of the live birds with satellite trackers and followed their fall journey to Peru, where more than 3500 sea lions have died of avian flu this winter. “The effect is global at the moment,” says Harrison.

To learn more about how long this avian flu outbreak will last, how worried we should be about the spillover to mammals and whether it has the potential to become the next pandemic in humans, we spoke to veterinary epidemiologist Victoria Hall. She has expertise in studying ecosystem health, was previously an epidemic surveillance officer for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is now director of The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota.

Corryn Wetzel: Avian flu has been around for decades – why are we seeing an outbreak now?

Victoria Hall: The current virus strain that’s been circulating has been acting very differently than past outbreaks. It is infecting way more wild birds than we typically see. And we’re seeing it spill over into bird species that are much more likely to get sick and or die. It’s incredibly devastating and expensive when it gets into poultry operations.

And this outbreak is remarkable because it’s lasting migratory season after migratory season. Often when we see an outbreak, we’ll see [avian flu] get into the poultry operations in an area, and it causes an outbreak for that season, but then it kind of goes away. But with this strain, we’re seeing it being sustained in wild bird populations.

How is avian flu sustained and spread by migratory birds?

Avian influenza circulates the world in migratory birds. There are a lot of species – we think primarily shorebirds, seabirds and waterfowl – that often can carry different strains of avian influenza without showing signs of illness. And they mix strains as they all gather together in migratory groups, and then they take off again and spread it.

Raptors, eagles, hawks, owls and vultures are birds that are very prone to getting very outwardly sick and potentially dying. Poultry – domestic chickens and turkeys –  are very prone to getting very sick and dying if they catch it. The virus attacks their brains, and it causes seizing, vocalising and being unable to stand. Birds are lying on their back or just completely non-responsive.

Did you see an increase in sick birds last spring?

We had a huge surge [of infections] in April and May of last year – just astronomical. It really mirrored what was being seen in the poultry industry. We were seeing three to four times as many birds come in last spring as we normally receive, and some days up to 60 to 70 per cent of them had flu.

We saw 213 positive-testing birds in 2022 that came to our centre. Only one survived – a great horned owl. We were just bringing in sick bird after sick bird, and it was just emotionally shredding.

We’re expecting in the next couple of weeks to start seeing cases go back up here as migratory birds come back through.

How does the virus jump to other animals?

For this virus, we think that the majority of transmission is probably by fomites – infected virus particles that get on things. So, anything coming out of the mouth or the cloaca – both ends of an infected bird – is going to be packed full of the virus.

This virus can live for weeks in a cool, damp environment. Then other animals can get it on them [and become infected]. Animals can also get infected after eating a bird with the virus.

We’re now seeing avian flu spill over into mammals in numbers that we’ve never seen before, which would make sense because a lot more wild birds are shedding the virus, and there are opportunities now for it to jump into mammals. We’re seeing raccoons and bears and foxes and even seals and dolphins getting infected with avian influenza right now.

Are humans at risk?

There are cases [of humans contracting the virus] around the world and there have been some deaths associated with the strain as well. But it does not appear that it’s easily transmissible to people, which is great.

Infections can happen when a person spends a lot of time with an infected bird in very close proximity. We think about people that are in close contact with infected poultry, not so much the birds outside your window.

But we know everything about this flu until tomorrow comes because it’s an influenza virus – it can continue to change and mutate.

What can we do to limit the spread?

With migratory birds, the biggest thing the public can do is help us collect information on what’s happening out there in the environment. When there are sick birds, use wildlife rehabilitators or your department of natural resources in your state to get help for that bird. If you see dead birds out there, report it to your state officials.

If you must interact with a sick or dead bird, make sure that you’re using gloves, you’re using a mask to protect yourself, you’re disposing of [the bird] in a manner that’s safe so that you’re not causing any spread of that virus.

It’s also just about spreading that word: we’ve got this virus that’s happening in the poultry world, but it’s in our wild bird species, too.

Can we vaccinate birds?

Vaccines are a hot topic right now – I feel like everyone who has birds of any sort is ready for some vaccines. We would want to make sure it’s just like our seasonal flu vaccine, where it matches exactly what’s circulating or it’s not as effective. And we’ve got so many different species of birds. If we have a vaccine that’s been validated in poultry, what is it going to do in an eagle that lives 30 years versus a chicken that you don’t anticipate to live that long? So, it would be quite a process before you could start doing things like vaccinating birds.

There’s a lot of talk about using vaccines for critically endangered species, where every single bird really matters to that population because their numbers are so low. But [vaccinating birds] would be a long process. [Though avian influenza vaccines exist], they are regulated on a federal level, so it’s not something that you could just go buy from the store.

How long will this last?

Usually, people prepare for an outbreak, respond to the outbreak for a set of months and then recover. But this one’s not stopping. We saw this with covid, too. We do a huge response initially, and then you’re like, “Oh, we have to manage this long term.” That might mean changing our protocols, looking at how we’re using testing and looking at how we’re using personal protective equipment.

Whether you’re in agriculture, or whether you’re in wildlife, people are having to change their mindset from just an acute response to living with this for, potentially, years. I don’t expect it to go anywhere anytime soon.

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