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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus (& H5N1) Updates: July 17, 2024

COVID-19 Coronavirus (& H5N1) Updates: July 17, 2024

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The complication here, as I understand it (every story I’ve read is too diffuse for an aggregation like this): The workers in this outbreak seem to have been infected by chickens carrying the specifically bovine strain of H5N1, not the ‘pandemic’ version that’s been killing birds and mammals all over the globe. If (big ‘if’) the strain that affects mammals is ‘mixing’ with its parent strain in poultry, the chances of a more virulent strain capable of human-to-human transmission increases greatly…

In coordination with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, the State Emergency Operations Center, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is now reporting a total of five human cases of avian influenza in workers responding to the avian flu outbreak at a commercial egg layer operation. CDC has confirmed four of the cases, and one additional case is presumptive positive and pending confirmation at CDC.

Three of these five cases confirmed by CDC are from the samples that CDPHE’s State Public Health Laboratory sent CDC on Friday, July 12 for confirmatory testing. The fourth case was an additional presumptive detected by the State Lab late Friday evening and has been confirmed by CDC. Samples for a fifth worker were presumptive positive at the State Lab on Saturday, July 13 and will be sent to CDC for confirmation. No additional test results are pending at this time.

The workers were culling poultry at a farm in northeast Colorado and exhibited mild symptoms, including conjunctivitis (pink eye) and common respiratory infection symptoms. None were hospitalized. State epidemiologists suspect the poultry workers’ cases are a result of working directly with infected poultry. The investigation is ongoing with support from CDC.

It is safe to eat properly handled and cooked poultry products. The proper handling and cooking of poultry, meat, and eggs kills bacteria and viruses, including avian flu viruses.

If you work with dairy cows or poultry that may have avian flu and you start to feel sick, seek medical care or call CDPHE at 303-692-2700 (after normal business hours: 303-370-9395). The Department can help you get a flu test and medicine if needed. More information about avian flu in humans is available at cdphe.colorado.gov/animal-related-diseases/hpai-h5n1.

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Using health data from almost 213,000 Americans who experienced reinfections, researchers have found that severe infections from the virus that causes COVID-19 tend to foreshadow similar severity of infection the next time a person contracts the disease. Additionally, scientists discovered that long COVID was more likely to occur after a first infection compared to a reinfection. The study is published in Communications Medicine.

The analysis used data from electronic health records of 3.1 million Americans who are part of the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). Researchers focused on 212,984 people who reported a reinfection. Those individuals were originally infected between March 1, 2020–December 31, 2022, and experienced a second infection by March 2023. Most participants (203,735) had COVID-19 twice, but a small number (478) had it three times or more. COVID-19 vaccines, though not available during the entire study period, correlated with a protective effect…

Scientists also discovered that regardless of the variant, long COVID cases were more likely to occur after a first infection compared to a reinfection. Long COVID was defined in the review as those experiencing long-term COVID-19 symptoms, such as feeling tired, coughing, or having problems sleeping, breathing, or thinking, after an acute coronavirus infection.

Researchers also found that lower levels of albumin, a protein made by the liver, may indicate a higher risk for reinfection. This finding could indicate lower albumin as a possible risk marker for reinfection. Scientists believe this deserves further attention, such as by considering trials to test if nutritional interventions may prevent reinfection or its severity.

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The Way We Live Now: Matt Couch, who doesn’t wanna ‘feel dumb’ by getting vaccinated, has 737,000 followers…


(For the record, I am afraid of needles, but I’d rather be scared than risk reinfection.)

Reader Interactions

26Comments

  2. 2.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Team Visma at the Tour de France lost its best mountain domestique (the lead out rider for the grueling mountain stages who helps their yellow Jersey (GC) contender through the Pyrenees and Alps) to COVID.  The rider caught it in his last race before the Tour and is still struggling to regain his health.  So a very fit young top athlete has been laid low for several weeks.  There are other reasons the Visma GC contender, Jonas Vingegaard, probably will not defend his title and place second, but COVID is indeed one of them.

  3. 3.

    cmorenc

    If Trump wins and gets control of the federal bureaucracy (including the CDC) – the official line will be that covid is nothing but a mild cold, nothing we need to do about that, especially vaccines that are more poisonous profit-makers for the drug companies – according the Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr

    I wish I was kidding and this was just amusing speculation, except this is a real possibility as a way for Trump to give some payback to RFK for his help in ratfucking the election.  Along with future SCOTUS justice Aileen Cannon.

  4. 4.

    Ladyraxterinok

    My son in Iowa said he heard that when (not if)  this bird flu gets to humans we should know that it is very contagious

     

    And the fatality is not around 2% like covid but is around 20%

    This means, according to the analysis he read/heard, that there will be not enough workers for food production, to maintain theeectricgrid, to drive trucks to move necessities where needed

    The analysis predicted this world-wide disaster would occur 2years after firsthand to human transmission

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    So, the RNC is a superspreader events among the “you can’t make us mask and vaxx!” crowd?  Please proceed, Republicans.

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ladyraxterinok: And the fatality is not around 2% like covid but is around 20%

    That’s rather over-dramatic, from what I have read.  There have been very few (diagnosed) cases of H5N1 in humans, to date; mostly it’s diagnosed when sufferers are hospitalized.  The known infections to date have been among the very young, the very old, and those with previous severe health problems (off the top of my head, one young adult victim was on immunosuppresents after a kidney transplant when he went home to visit his beloved pet chickens).

    If H5N1 does become a human pandemic… and, okay, signs point to that happening… it will be a very bad event, but one gift we’ve got is the infrastructure set up to deal with covid-19.

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    @Ladyraxterinok:  That’s actually something to mention among friends and while out canvassing.  We already saw how badly Trump and his supporters handled Covid in 2020.

    Take another epidemic, and subtract workers who could keep the electric grid up and online during our exciting extreme weather.

  12. 12.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Anne Laurie: *We* have learned something, but the people in general have learned the opposite. The next big pandemic is going to be deadlier because so many are politically primed to oppose pandemic controls now.

    Nobody is *ever* going to shut down schools or require masks again. Getting vaccines out will be tough–a right-wing government might even ban them. We’ll just let people die.

  13. 13.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Elizabelle: My impression is that in the right and maybe the center, the story is that they want Trump back because *Biden* mishandled COVID so badly. If only Trump had won in 2020, I don’t know, some kind of Trump magic would have made it go away. Remember that in a lot of less-urban Red America things didn’t get really bad until 2021.

  15. 15.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ladyraxterinok: Bear in mind, there’s a subculture dedicated to blowing up pandemic anxiety in not necessarily factual ways, sort of the inverse of the denialist subculture. I have friends who are deep into this and I suspect they pass on a lot of overblown rumors.

  16. 16.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: This is true, it didn’t get bad here until the end of 2020, and then we were the epicenter of the Delta covid outbreak in July/August 2021.

    I see from our wastewater monitoring that there was a big Covid spike at the end of June. Not surprising, that’s when it got hot here.

  17. 17.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Anne Laurie: One big difference from COVID is that we’ve got a long-established system for getting out flu vaccines, specifically. It won’t be a matter of getting a previously experimental technology to market. And people do also seem to trust those a bit more, so that *might* lower resistance to getting shots? That’s working against the COVID-induced wariness I mentioned above.

  18. 18.

    Hilbertsubspace

    @Ladyraxterinok: Initially reported fatality rates are always higher then the actual rate.  The Swine flu scare during the Obama administration is a good example.  That was initially reported as having a high mortality rate (several pig farm workers in Mexico died), but ended up being like a super nasty flu season.

    Covid’s actual fatality rate was probably just under 1% (way lower now thanks to vaccines).  People like me who were asymptomatic are often uncounted.

    A 5% mortality rate would still be horrific and overload our medical workers (again), but it wouldn’t be a societal breakdown event.  Even a modern Black Plague event would be survivable, it would just emotional scar us for a hundred years

    P.S. Note to CDC: Advocate for the development of a vaccine and vaccinate the poultry and dairy workers.  Even if the virus mutates over time, it will still provide an increase in survival chance

    P.P.S.  I don’t think the flu can spread asymptomatically, so that make it somewhat easier to control then Covid.  Honestly I’m way outside my knowledge base here.

  19. 19.

    TBone

    @Matt McIrvin: things got really bad here in central PA right away but it wasn’t being publicly acknowledged.  We are two hours from NYC and have a lot of commuting.

    We’re actually physically closer to NYC than to Philly as far as driving.

  20. 20.

    Another Scott

    Thanks for the continued updates, AL.  While we don’t know the future and panic is counter-productive, it’s important to be informed about this stuff – ignorance is dangerous.

    :-(

    re the CDC Covid Data Tracker graph – I really, really wish they would use a Savitzky-Golay smoothing filter on the data rather than a simple moving average.  A moving average (almost) always lags the real data and lagging data in public health is dangerous. [ sigh ]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  21. 21.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Matt McIrvin: …though apparently there’s work being done on mRNA flu vaccines too, so we’ve got the COVID pandemic tech in the toolbox as well as traditional stuff.

  22. 22.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Hilbertsubspace: my impression is that H5N1 vaccines already exist and the CDC is already preparing to build stockpiles. It’s not like the Covid pandemic where they had to figure out how to build a distribution network for a new type of vaccine with different handling requirements from scratch.

  24. 24.

    The Pale Scot

    After 4 years of successfully evading, I have gotten it, not fun

    Got a room near my father’s nursing home, He is headed to the BiFrost bridge, using uber, now I’m stuck in my room for 10 days at least before I can see him again. can’t wear a mask it causes coughing fits, so door dash it is if I actually get hungry

     

    this sucks

  26. 26.

    wu ming

    @Hilbertsubspace:

    one thing we learned during covid is that the flu actually *is* spread asymptomatically. when everyone masked up for covid, it absolutely stomped flu transmission flat, to the point where one strain of flu B appears to have gone extinct. it turns out the masks prevented asymptomatic aerosol spread.

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