Two European regulators said on Wednesday they were tracking variants of the bird flu virus due to the threat of the pathogen adapting to spread between humans and triggering future pandemics.
The United States has reported its first outbreak of H5N9 bird flu in poultry on a duck farm in California, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Monday.
The United States and Canada have lifted embargoes on certain French poultry imports imposed after Paris decided to vaccinate ducks against bird flu in October 2023, the French agriculture ministry said on Monday.
U.S. poultry producers should ramp up testing and monitoring of turkeys for bird flu before they are slaughtered to ensure the virus stays out of the food supply, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Friday.
The U.S. will rebuild its stockpile of bird flu vaccines for poultry matched to the current strain of the virus circulating among commercial flocks and wild birds, the Department of Agriculture said on Wednesday.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Friday it would award $306 million (C$441.7 million) in funds to help bird flu monitoring, as the virus spreads in dairy herds and farm workers across the country.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday its analysis of samples from the first severe case of bird flu in the country last week showed mutations not seen in samples from an infected backyard flock on the patient's property.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that a patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of H5N1 infection in Louisiana, marking the first known instance of a severe human illness linked to the bird flu virus in the United States.
While the United States government continues to monitor the spread of bird flu in the country, the Biden administration said it won’t order the stockpiling of a vaccine for humans. U.S. health officials stressed the chances of a human contracting the H5N1 variant of avian influenza remain very low.