The Indiana Board of Animal Health (IBAH) said today that initial tests at a third turkey farm in the state are positive for H5 avian flu. The new detection marks the United States' fifth recent outbreak in poultry. Further testing is under way to assess if the virus is the same highly pathogenic H5N1 strain that struck the first Indiana farm.
A new study comparing excess years of life lost (YLL) during the first year of COVID-19 in parts of England and Wales shows that economically deprived areas suffered three times as many deaths as affluent regions, and young adults (15 to 44 years old) were 11 times more likely to die from the virus in poorer parts of the United Kingdom. The study is published in PLOS Medicine.
The Commonwealth Pharmacists Association (CPA) last week announced a new program to improve surveillance and prescribing of antimicrobials in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) .
Confirmation of the H5N1 strain comes after the virus was detected last week at an Indiana turkey farm.
People who received a different brand of COVID-19 vaccine booster than they did in the primary series had lower rates of infection than those who received the same brand, according to a study in Singapore published late last week in JAMA.
An analysis conducted at hospitals in Michigan found that the more antibiotic stewardship strategies a hospital reported, the lower its overuse of antibiotics at discharge, researchers reported yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
A study in Qatar estimates that previous COVID-19 infection imparts 56% protection against future symptomatic infection caused by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, down from about 90% for other SARS-CoV-2 strains.
The study, published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), was led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar in Doha.
The detection marks the first appearance of high-path avian flu in US poultry since 2020.
A small Massachusetts General Hospital–based study in JAMA shows more lasting antibodies in infants after COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, compared with infants whose mothers had natural COVID-19 infections during pregnancy but were not vaccinated.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been confirmed for the first time in Louisiana, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) said late last week.
