MAY  BLOG

HEALTH UPDATES

Health officials warn of dangerous mosquito species found in San Diego.  Sat, April 13, 2024.  SAN DIEGO.  An invasive mosquito species that can carry dangerous diseases, has been identified in several counties across California, including in San Diego County.

Invasive Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known as the yellow fever mosquito, usually bite several times and active during the day. They can transmit Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya viruses, according to San Diego’s Vector Control Program.

The small, black mosquitoes have distinctive white stripes on their legs and back.

The California Department of Health has been monitoring invasive Aedes mosquitoes, throughout California, for the past several years as part of a statewide vector-borne disease surveillance system. The invasive Aedes mosquitoes have been found in all areas in San Diego County.

Across California, just a few counties have found both Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, the tiger mosquito.  The update on Dengue Infections in California by CDPH reports infections so far in 2024 as of April 1 by county:

• Kings County — 1
• Napa — 1
• Riverside — 1
• San Francisco — 3
• San Mateo — 1
• Santa Cruz — 2
• Sonoma — 1
• Ventura — 2
• Yolo — 1

“Highly pathogenic” avian flu confirmed in Colorado cows.  Sat, April 27, 2024. (COLORADO) — A Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, HPAI, has been discovered in dairy cows in Northeast Colorado, the first confirmed case of avian influenza in Colorado cattle.  HPAI has been detected in dairy cattle in Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Michigan, North Carolina, Idaho, South Dakota, and Ohio. 

The Colorado State Veterinarian’s office was notified of signs of HPAI in a herd of cows on April 22, 2024. Samples were submitted to the Colorado State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and confirmed positive by the USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory, NVSL, on April 25, 2024.  The herd was placed in quarantine.  According to the USDA, consumer milk safety is assured through pasteurization, which effectively deactivates viruses  and bacteria, including influenza.

The USDA continues to take steps to protect the health of livestock. The department is working closely with federal partners at the CDC to protect the health of people while the FDA works to ensure the safety of the food supply. The U.S. government is committed to addressing this situation with urgency, said the USDA’s website.

Early test results show pasteurized milk with traces of H5N1 virus isn’t infectious, FDA says.  CNN.  Fri, April 26, 2024.   Early tests of pasteurized milk – purchased at grocery stores in areas with cows that have tested positive for H5N1 influenza, bird flu, suggests it is not infectious and wouldn’t be able to make people sick, the US Food and Drug Administration said.

The FDA has been testing samples of pasteurized milk in which traces of H5N1 have been detected, inoculating fertilized eggs with samples of the milk and waiting to see whether the virus can grow.  Egg inoculation tests are considered the “gold-standard” for determining whether live virus is present.  Tests of infant and toddler formula made with powdered milk did not detect any traces of H5N1.

“These results reaffirm our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said in an update.  1 out of 5 milk samples it has tested from grocery stores tested positive for gene fragments from the virus.  The FDA said “it found more positive samples near areas where herds are known to be infected, but it didn’t say specifically where the milk samples had tested positive.”

Most milk in the United States is pasteurized, or heated briefly, to kill pathogens. That process has been shown to kill viruses like H5N1, but the agency says it is doing additional tests to make sure that still holds true in this instance.  The FDA has long recommended that consumers not drink unpasteurized or raw milk because of the possibility that it may harbor germs that can pose serious health risks.

The US Department of Agriculture confirmed late March, it had detected highly pathogenic avian influenza in dairy cows in Texas and Kansas, the first time a virus that has been decimating bird populations around the globe had shown up in cattle.  Infected cows have been confirmed in more than 30 farms across nine states.  The FDA indicated milk from sick cows is being “diverted or destroyed,” milk sold in interstate commerce is being pasteurized, a process that heats it briefly to kill microbes.

The infected cows stopped eating as much as usual and their milk became thickened and discolored. Veterinarian tests  found the milk teeming with the virus.  Samples from their lungs didn’t show much evidence of infection, leading the doctors to believe the animals’ mammary glands were directly infected, perhaps through shared milking equipment.

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service keeps a list of diseases that are required to be reported in animals. Avian influenza, or bird flu, is required to be reported in poultry and wild birds, is not required in cattle.  “You wouldn’t think of H5N1 in cows being something to ever worry about. 

Dr. Michael Osterholm, Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy director at the University of Minnesota, said his major worry is the outbreak spreading to pigs, since farms that keep cows often keep other animals.

Flu viruses enter cells through sialic acids, which serve as entry points.  H5N1 hasn’t learned to efficiently access the human version of the sialic acid receptor.  Pigs have the same sialic acid receptors as birds and humans in the respiratory tracts. If H5N1 causes a large outbreak in pigs, it would give the virus a perfect opportunity to learn to attach to human sialic acids.

CDC spokesperson Jason McDonald indicated that 23 people with exposures to H5N1 had been tested, including one person in Texas who previously tested positive.  No other people have tested positive in the current outbreak. 

VACCINE  UPDATES

HOME HEALTH NEWS.  No More Endless Boosters? Scientists Develop One-for-All Virus Vaccine.  End of the line for endless boosters?  Researchers at UC Riverside have developed a new vaccine approach using RNA that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.

Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people get their updated vaccine.  COVID vaccines, have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating.   

This new strategy would eliminate the need to create different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus.  Results from studies, UCR virologist and paper author Rong Hai were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  “It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.”

Traditionally, vaccines contain a dead or modified, live version of a virus.  The body’s immune system recognizes a protein in the virus, mounts an immune response, producing T-cells that attack the virus and stop it from spreading.  It also produces “memory” B-cells that train your immune system to protect you from future attacks.

The new vaccine also uses a live, modified version of a virus, but does not rely on the vaccinated body having this traditional immune response or immune active proteins.  Instead, this relies on small, silencing RNA molecules.  This is the reason it can be used by babies whose immune systems are underdeveloped, or people suffering from a disease that overtaxes their immune system.  There are few vaccines suitable for use in babies younger than six months old. However, even newborn mice produce small RNAi molecules, which is why the vaccine protected them.

“If we make a mutant virus that cannot produce the protein to suppress our RNAi, we can weaken the virus. It can replicate to some level, but then loses the battle to the host RNAi response, weakened in this way can be used as a vaccine for boosting.  

The flu vaccine will likely be delivered in the form of a spray, as many people have an aversion to needles and respiratory infections move through the nose, so a spray might be an easier delivery system, Hai said.

VARIANT UPDATES

Does anybody care about COVID-19 anymore?  Apr. 29, 2024.  The federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency officially ended a year ago, with it came phasing out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s authorization to collect certain public health data.  Now, the federal requirement to report COVID-19 hospital admissions will end April 30, 2024.  What does that mean for COVID-19 tracking?

Dr. Anuj Mehta, member of Colorado's Vaccine Equity Taskforce and a critical care pulmonologist at Denver Health and the University of Colorado, described the changes and shared insight on where COVID-19 stands today.

• Does the end of COVID hospital admission data matter?  Yes and no. Many tools are still in place, such as wastewater and positivity testing and will still be collected and reported.

So, where does COVID stand right now?  Four years in, Covid-19 is still claiming hundreds of American lives a week, according to from the World Health Organization data. 

• The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment will no longer update daily and weekly hospital admissions data after May 1 but will continue to update currently hospitalized, positivity rates, deaths, and vaccinations data in its COVID-19 online dashboard.

What are the precautions? - They’ve been the same:

• wash your hands,
• cough into your elbow,
• stay home if you feel ill, and
• get vaccinated -  against COVID-19, other infectious diseases.

How does public health look in the long term?  By most official measures, the pandemic is over. The big unanswered question, what lessons were learned that can help Colorado and the U.S. weather another public health emergency. 

“We've come out of the pandemic with millions dead, many millions more with long COVID, parts of the health care system broken or fundamentally changed … and we haven't learned the lessons to augment our public health surveillance capacity, indicated Dr. Mehta.   

How to Protect Yourself?  Getting vaccinated is your best bet!

IT’S NOT OVER!

Stay safe.  Mask.  Social distance.  Frequent hand washing.  Avoid crowds

ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR PERSONAL HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL

• https://www.yahoo.com/news/health-officials-warn-dangerous-mosquito-011706321.html
• https://scitechdaily.com/no-more-endless-boosters-scientists-develop-one-for-all-virus-vaccine/
• https://www.yahoo.com/news/fda-finds-traces-h5n1-bird-002729243.html
• https://www.cpr.org/2024/04/29/does-anybody-care-about-covid-19-anymore/