Weekly H5N1 Bird Flu Update: ⚠️ Ongoing ILI/wastewater anomalies in the Bay Area 📉 Calling attention to steep decline in number of reported commercial poultry outbreaks, unclear if 'real' (similar decline in wild birds/mammals...) 💩 H5 WW detections in OR, CA, MD, and NJ tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

This is a major problem, I think can be addressed to some extent by necessarily 'short circuiting' the muted federal response. Have to start thinking outside the box to build local trust between allies and vulnerable workers, critical to filling these massive monitoring gaps.

Following up here, unfortunately the patient died today, multiple organ failure consequent to H5N1 infection. Hospital is monitoring/testing all care providers who had contact:

The Mexican Ministry of Health announced the first human case of H5N1 bird flu in the country today, a three-year old girl infected with H5N1 in Durango, Mexico. Infection confirmed as HPAI H5N1 on April 1 by InDRE. Child is in serious condition, receiving oseltamivir, origin of infection unknown.

Finally have new CDC data up and a lot to cover (🧵 to follow): 💩 Lots of new H5 wastewater detections + new backdated entries ⚠️ More major influenza-like illness (ILI) / wastewater anomalies, where predicted ILI is much lower than actual 😷 Seasonal Flu A is declining tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me on Kofi! ❤️ I'm releasing a larger update later this afternoon now that we have new weekly CDC data, but if you like my work or want to help me continue tracking bird flu please consider donating at the link below! ko-fi.com/danielrsummers

"[FDA] is suspending efforts to improve its bird flu testing of milk, cheese and pet food due to massive staff cuts at the agency... [it] would have served as a quality assurance program (similar to salmonella testing) to ensure reliable results in the FDA's testing of dairy products and pet food."

Bird flu updates! 💩 Continued H5 wastewater detections in Newark, NJ (as of 3/31) + new detections in: ➜ Blue Earth Co., MN (3/28) ➜ Jackson Co., MI (3/27) 🐈 H5N1 infected cats identified in IA, IL, and PA (3/19 - 3/24) 🐔 2.1M poultry affected in Mar. (vs 12.6M in Feb.) tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

How will cuts at FDA impact U.S. response to bird flu? We're told agency's top veterinarians overseeing contaminated pet food indeed laid off And chief medical officer Dr Hilary Marston who had been overseeing MCMs for humans and agency response www.linkedin.com/in/hilary-ma...

Effectively eliminating NIOSH Respiratory Health and Health Effects divisions on the verge of what'll probably be one of the most catastrophic human pandemics in history.

Added some cool functionality to this 'H5N1 Animals' tab, I've scoured the internet documenting every known bird flu outbreak in livestock by county since 2024, and now you can contextualize these by date/proximity with reported poultry and wild/bird mammal detections! 🕵️ tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

NEW: Per a source with knowledge, the entire HHS Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy, or OIDP, was just fired.

Growing number of bird flu-infected cats this year (49), NVSL is I think still working through a backlog, so probably not a full accounting. If you have an indoor/outdoor cat in any area indicated on the second map (probably also SE), please reconsider the outdoor part: tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

I'm less and less confident the Newark H5 wastewater detections are driven by birds. Miami as example of "classic" bird-driven detection. Two straight months is ridiculous, the only place outside of CA experiencing something like and clearly unattributable to dairy (unless NMTS is whiffing badly)

I added the ability to see known locations of H5N1 (bird flu) outbreaks in livestock today. Very few states provide county-level data so I'm relying on media sources, but it's important to contextualize these outbreaks with poultry, wild bird, mammal, and water detections! tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

USDA, in livestock data released today, didn't include the H5N1 infected dairy cattle herd in MN (announced Monday). This is due to MN BAH classifying this as a reinfection of the same herd from July 2024. Nevertheless, I've done them both a favor and included it myself: tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

The high prevalence of H5N1 in wild birds globally ensures that incidents like this will occur with increasing regularity. Each cross-species infection increases the risk of viral mutation, which in turn increases the risk of human to human transmission. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Great piece from @jennifernuzzo.bsky.social on the critical need to sustain *and* expand wastewater monitoring for bird flu. Left: NWSS sites currently testing for bird flu (blue and purple). Right: all H5N1 detections since 2024. Huge wastewater surveillance gaps. tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

USDA recently announced funding priorities for the $100M "HPAI Poultry Innovation Grand Challenge" (part of the $1B initiative to "address" bird flu/rising egg prices). "Innovative solutions to improve response strategies or minimize depopulation of poultry." www.aphis.usda.gov/funding/hpai...

"[We] should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it." H5N1, a highly pathogenic avian influenza, has a near 100% mortality rate in poultry. This will cause more human infections.

Tried registering for this USDA webinar to learn more about the voluntary biosecurity risk assessments for commercial poultry facilities. Not great!

A spokesperson from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health said recently that "there isn't an additional risk to the general public, because dead birds cannot efficiently transmit [H5N1]." I disagree, the risk is of a reassortment event. Here's what a live bird market looks like:

"Our evidence suggests that it is likely going to be hard to treat people severely infected with this bovine H5N1 bird flu strain [...] existing antivirals’ effectiveness against H5N1 bird flu is route and drug dependent, in some cases doing almost nothing."

We're almost 1 year since bird flu was discovered in US dairy cattle, so how are we doing? 😅 1/1/24 - 3/14/24 • 2.37M poultry affected 1/1/25 - 3/14/25 • 36.1M poultry affected • 69 infected dairy cattle herds across 6 states

A few interesting updates today: • New H5 wastewater detection in Miami, FL (3/12) • Two more live bird market H5N1 outbreaks in NYC-area (Hudson Co., 3/12) + a third in central NJ (3/12) • Two live bird market outbreaks in Allentown (3/13) and Philadelphia, PA (3/12) tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

Just added new CDC H5 wastewater data: • Confirms all previous WastewaterSCAN detections this week • Lots of hits in NJ again (see picture) • First detection in Camden, NJ (3/8) • 8 new detections in OR (3/8) tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

Appears we have some B3.13 sequences with PB2 E627K (mammalian adaptation) in dairy cattle for the 1st time, linked with recent H5N1 herd outbreaks in San Bernardino. In humans, this mutation 1st appeared in the TX case (host mutation?), then the BC case (probable host mutation), then WY (D1.1):

➜Two more infected dairy herds in Idaho, still unclear if late-Feb was D1.1 spillover. ➜Three more live bird market H5N1 outbreaks in NYC. Up to now seven market outbreaks across NYC, >1,510 poultry affected, since the start of the month. Gov. Hochul needs to act (again): tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

More H5 wastewater detections outside CA, several for the 1st time (*): • Newark, NJ • Red Wing, MN • Provo, UT* • Louisville, KY* • Montpelier, VT* • Strafford, NH* Most of these are probably driven by migrating H5N1 infected birds, will increase with spring migration: tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

My open letter to Elon Musk ⬇️ Unfortunately, I can't share it on his social media megaphone, because he broke it and it still isn't working. Similarly, he's hobbled all our disease-detection systems around the world. We will regret this.

An additional two H5N1 outbreaks reported at live bird markets (1,310 affected) in NYC on Mar. 7, one in the Bronx and the other on Staten Island. Total of now four live bird market outbreaks in NYC since the lifting of Gov. Hochul's temporary order suspending operations in early-Feb.

Yes. If DHS can barge in, say your visa was revoked, be told you have a green card, say it's revoked too, and then disappear you so that neither your lawyer nor your family can find you, then all the guardrails are gone. There is no policy, practice, or law protecting anyone.

ICE casually disappearing a recent Columbia graduate student, a green card holder and permanent US resident, at the direction of the White House. ICE also lied about where he's being held and they and the WH refused to comment. This is our American Gestapo in action:

222 cases in 23 states, with 38 hospitalizations and now 2 deaths. It's unbelievably fucked up that we're here in the year 2025 and measles elimination is at-risk. Blood is on the hands of RFK Jr., Jenny McCarthy, Alex Jones, Simone Gold, Sherry Tenpenny, and every other dipshit antivax grifter.

Lol I have the recently updated list of "controversial or high-profile topics" for National Cancer Institute materials that need to be sent to the NCI Clearance Team before publication. It's hilarious.

Not exactly what you want to hear from CDC during a growing nationwide measles epidemic:

Big weekly update with new CDC data (H5 wastewater, ILI activity, seasonal Flu A): • CDC H5 detections in Newark, NJ (disagreement with WastewaterSCAN) and Hampden, MA on Mar. 1 • Backfilled Jan./Feb. H5 detections for 23 counties in OR • Slight decline in ILI activity tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard

Pretty normal stuff, nothing to see here folks, certainly not an indicator that people are suffering and increasingly desperate. No, we will not be examining *why* people are suffering:

A stunning failure, unfortunately emblematic of the overall US H5N1 response: In mid-January, 20 dairy workers in Michigan became "sick with flu-like symptoms,” and "[it] spread quickly among the workers.” They tried to access PPE/testing/treatments, but blocked by lack of staff/language barrier:

As the measles outbreak grows, and if you can and your insurance covers it, please try and get an adult MMR booster. Particularly if you're 20+ years out from your initial MMR series. I personally got mine at CVS a few months ago and it was an easy process! pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Some good news for a change! WastewaterSCAN showing H5 was *not* detected in wastewater samples taken in Newark on Feb. 28 and Mar. 3:

Don't forget about the pigs! Interesting pre-print on pathogenicity and transmissibility of H5N1 B3.13 (dairy cattle) in pigs. Note that this is a B3.13 study, not a D1.1 (+ D701N) study, so where pigs are moderately susceptible to B3.13 (no onward Tx) it may be a little worse with new spillovers:

H5 wastewater study in the Feb. 27 CDC MMWR: Retrospective analysis in Oregon found no association between wastewater detections and history of poultry outbreak(s) or presence of dairy plants/farms. Makes sense, no known H5N1 dairy cattle outbreaks in the state. www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influe...

Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) released an epidemiological update on H5N1 in the Americas yesterday. Seeing the detections across N. & S. America is a stark reminder of the need for cross-border collaboration and data sharing. Bird flu doesn't respect borders. www.paho.org/sites/defaul...

Two more H5N1 detections at live bird markets in Queens on Mar. 3. Also highlighting the now 41 detections in domestic cats in 2025 to-date. Fast approaching the total number of domestic cat detections in 2024 (48). Please be careful with pets! 🟨 = Poultry 🟦 = Wild Birds 🟪 = Mammals 🟥 = Wastewater

Trump actually named one of my (illegally terminated) USAID projects, supporting LGBTQI rights in Lesotho, as one of the DOGE examples of "waste, fraud, and abuse" tonight. Just wanted to say I'm proud of the work of those local organizations, and proud to have supported their fight for equality.

CDC Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics released a new report on H5N1 risk to the US population. I agree with most of this, although it still downplays risk. I disagree that there's "little evidence of genetic changes that suggest adaptation to humans." www.cdc.gov/cfa-qualitat...

This country is just off the fucking rails

New H5N1 dairy cattle detection in Idaho (1 herd, Feb. 28), interested to see if this is another D1.1 spillover. Another H5 wastewater detection in Newark, NJ as of Feb. 26. The very large spike on Feb. 21 hasn't been corrected so I'm taking this to mean it was accurate. tinyurl.com/H5N1Dashboard