Bird flu cases rise to 31 in US, still no evidence of person-to-person spread: CDC
(WASHINGTON) — The number of confirmed bird flu cases has risen in the U.S. to 31, federal health officials said on Thursday.
Washington health officials reported four presumptive positive bird flu cases over the weekend. Since then, two of the four cases have been confirmed, according to Dr. Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The confirmed and presumptive cases all worked with infected poultry at a commercial egg farm. All had mild symptoms and were given antiviral medication.
“These numbers of confirmed and presumptive cases will certainly shift as more cases are potentially identified in Washington state and then confirmed at the CDC,” Shah said during a press conference on Thursday.
Additionally, the number of cases in California rose to 15, which is the highest number in a single state so far.
The CDC also said there is no evidence that human-to-human transmission is occurring, sharing the results of an investigation that occurred after a Missouri case of bird flu was confirmed through routine influenza surveillance. Investigators found a household contact who had similar symptoms.
They also investigated the hospital where the bird flu patient was hospitalized, and they found that 112 health care workers had interacted with this patient, six of whom reported experiencing respiratory symptoms. Serologic testing, which looks at antibodies in the blood, confirmed the workers were not positive for bird flu.
Health officials’ investigation suggest the Missouri index patient and the household contact were both exposed to the same source, but further testing revealed the household contact did not meet criteria for a confirmed case.
The CDC said the risk to the general public is still low, and there is no evidence that the virus has mutated to better infect individuals.
Additionally, the CDC confirmed that laboratory company Quest Diagnostics will have a bird flu test soon available with a prescription from a provider for clinical purposes. Being prescribed the test would require being at risk for bird flu and experiencing symptoms of the virus.
Timeline of the bird flu outbreak
The outbreak began in early March when the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a bird flu strain that had sickened millions of birds across the U.S was identified in several mammals this year. Later, health officials said they were investigating the illness among dairy cows, but assured there was no risk to the commercial milk supply.
The following month, the CDC said a human case of bird flu was identified in Texas and linked to cattle.
Since then, cases have been confirmed in California, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Washington. All the cases were among people who came into contact with sick dairy cows or infected poultry and all patients recovered with antivirals.
In late April, reports emerged that bird flu fragments had been found in samples of pasteurized milk. However, the fragments are inactive remnants of the virus and cannot cause infection.
Federal agencies maintain the U.S. commercial milk supply remains safe because milk is pasteurized and dairy farmers are required to dispose of any milk from sick cows, so it does not enter the supply.
In May, the CDC said in a summary that it is preparing for the “possibility of increased risk to human health” from bird flu as part of the federal government’s preparedness efforts, including filling doses of bird flu vaccine into vials to shore up the national stockpile.
Earlier this month, federal health officials announced they are providing $72 million to vaccine manufacturers to help ensure currently available bird flu vaccines are ready-to-use, if needed.
(NEW YORK) — People who are in need of weight loss medications but do not have insurance coverage will soon have a new way to access one of the popular medications, Zepbound.
Eli Lilly, the maker of Zepbound, announced Tuesday it will begin selling the weight loss drug directly to consumers through the company’s direct pharmacy, LillyDirect.
With a doctors’ prescription, consumers will be able to purchase Zepbound in vial forms that are about half the price of the auto-injector pre-filled pens sold in pharmacies, according to Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks.
A one-month supply of Zepbound at a 2.5-milligram dose will cost $349, while a one-month supply at a 5-milligram dose will cost $549, according to Ricks.
Medical professionals can start filling prescriptions for the Zepbound vials on Tuesday via LillyDirect and the vials will start shipping in the days ahead.
Ricks noted that the new option will be self-pay only and will not participate in insurance.
With insurance coverage, Zepbound can cost as low as $25 per month, but without coverage, the medication can cost more than $1,000 per month.
Consumers who purchase Zepbound through LillyDirect will have access to educational resources on how to administer the medication, according to Ricks.
Zepbound is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a weight loss management treatment for people with obesity or those who are overweight with at least one related underlying condition such as high blood pressure.
However, many private insurers and Medicare do not cover weight loss drugs used for obesity.
Zepbound contains the same active ingredient, tirzepatide, as another medication, Mounjaro, which is also made by Lilly and is FDA-approved to treat Type 2 diabetes.
Tirzepatide works by helping the pancreas increase the production of insulin to move sugar from the blood into body tissues.
It also slows down the movement of food through the stomach and curbs appetite, thereby causing weight loss.
Past clinical studies have shown users of medications used for weight loss like Zepbound and Mounjaro can lose between 5% and 20% of their body weight on the medications over time.
Medical specialists point out that using medication to lose weight also requires cardio and strength training and changing your diet to one that includes proteins and less processed foods with added sugars.
The most commonly reported side effects of medications used for weight loss are nausea and constipation, but gallbladder and pancreatic disease are also reported.
Makers of these drugs recommend having a conversation about the side effect profile and personalized risks with a health care professional before starting.
(NEW YORK) — Sara Anne Willette has spent more than 1,620 days in isolation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The New Jersey resident took health precautions in public before the pandemic because of her common variable immunodeficiency, which means she doesn’t make enough antibodies to fight infections.
Simple tasks like going for a walk down the street or taking a trip to the grocery store are laden with safety hurdles and anxiety for Willette.
Stressful tasks, like moving from Iowa to New Jersey during the pandemic for her husband’s new job, are now even more taxing. The two drove overnight to avoid crowds at gas stations and rest stops, and she’s prepared to do it again. The substantial health precautions in her day-to-day life are forcing her and her family to pack up their life once more and look for a new home in the countryside.
“I’m angry that society is largely inaccessible and I have to risk my life for the bare minimum, like medical care,” Willette told ABC News in a phone call. “Why live in civilization if all of it is completely inaccessible?”
More than four years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Willette is among the immunocompromised and disabled Americans who’ve complete changed their way of living to survive.
Her anger was tinged with disappointment as she talked about how the rest of the world has gone back to normal despite the hundreds of people across the country dying from COVID-19 each week amid a summer surge of the virus.
COVID-19 has also been a debilitating event for tens of millions of people who have or are currently experiencing long COVID, which in some cases has been defined as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
With some lawmakers beginning to propose mask bans in hopes of reducing crime, it’s no longer an option for some to live life normally among the rest of society.
Willette was among the people ABC News checked back in with after previously talking to them about isolating two years after the pandemic began.
Finding a new normal
There are simple joys that Willette misses: having a garden, running, walking, letting her dogs run without a leash and drinking coffee on a porch.
She’s planning on moving to the mountains — somewhere between New Hampshire and Virginia — and gaining enough acreage to allow her and her family to embrace the activities they lost during the pandemic. However, being alone out in the countryside isn’t the goal for Willette.
Rather, she intends to build a pathogen-aware community. That means buying enough land so other disabled, immunocompromised or health-conscious able-bodied people who don’t want to get COVID-19 can join them and create a home of their own.
“We want something that feels like normal but is set up in a way that we decrease harm for everyone in the community,” Willette said. “We can’t do that in an urban area or even in a suburban area. There are too many risks.”
Her mother and mother-in-law intend to move and join Willette, her husband and her son on the property as well.
For Charis Hill, a California resident who has a systemic inflammatory disease and takes immunosuppressive medications, it’s been hard to access an in-person doctor’s appointment since many safety precautions for COVID-19 are no longer being taken in medical care facilities.
As someone with “high-level medical needs,” the lack of COVID precautions has even made seeking routine care a challenge.
“Just the fact that a medical environment that is supposed to know what a virus can do, most medical environments no longer require masking, and that’s what makes it unsafe for people like me to go, for anybody to go,” Hill told ABC over the phone.
“The impact of the delayed care, where people can’t go get routine care, that’s going to affect the whole health care system. Emergencies happen because of delayed care.”
Despite the stress and forced isolation, they find moments of joy growing their own food in their garden, and stay busy by working to reduce the local feral cat population through Trap-Neuter-Return practices.
They break their isolation monthly to meet at a park with a close-knit circle of friends who take similar safety precautions — they’re all masked, socially distanced and have tested beforehand.
“That’s really the only way for me to meet strangers and also to make new friends,” Hill said.
Mask bans would further bar immunocompromised people from public life, according to Hill.
Such bans “make it unsafe for us to exist,” Hill noted, because people may feel pressure not to wear masks when they’re sick or if immunocompromised people are worried about backlash for doing so.
With more people testing positive for COVID this summer, and with the fall and winter virus season ahead, Hill says society’s “new normal” should involve free testing, vaccines, access to at-home antiviral therapy paxlovid and flexible hybrid working options to mitigate the spread of illnesses.
“We need a new normal, and a new normal that is equitable for everyone, and that not only prioritizes high risk people, but that also reduces infection overall,” Hill said.
COVID concerns for the immunocompromised population
Immunocompromised people — about 3% of the adult population in the U.S., according to the National Institutes of Health — continue to face potentially serious medical complications or death when it comes to COVID-19. Even for those who were not previously at risk now have seen life-changing heath impacts.
“Long COVID can happen to anyone, and I have certainly seen young, healthy, vigorous athletes have prolonged, debilitating symptoms from long COVID,” Dr. Jeannina Smith, the medical director of University of Wisconsin’s Transplant Infectious Disease Program, told ABC over the phone.
However, society has largely appeared to have moved on. The CDC stopped recording some COVID-19 related data and some politicians have proposed mask bans as a potential solution to crime.
“It takes us a step back for public health,” Hill said. “We have other pandemics that are coming, and it’s going to make it harder to reenact mask mandates if we need them in the future.”
For the immunocompromised, regular society could seem like a minefield, according to Dr. Cassandra M. Pierre, the medical director of Public Health Programs and the associate hospital epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center.
She noted that people at higher risk for complications “are still, unfortunately, in our hospitals today. We see that they have this forced risk of going on to develop critical COVID or potentially even die. This is still occurring. COVID is still happening.”
This is all happening despite a better understanding of disease transmission and the information needed to be better equipped to empower communities to protect their health, Pierre added.
Patients have been harassed or mocked for wearing masks in public, Dr. Jeannina Smith noted, despite international and national medical organizations emphasizing the importance of mask wearing as a mitigation tactic for illnesses. Hill has experienced this first hand.
“You can’t look at someone and know that they’re receiving immunosuppression for an organ transplant or an autoimmune condition, and they remain at risk,” Smith said.
“Even if you don’t have individual risk, any person can still spread COVID to someone who has higher risk,” she said. “In fact, much of the spread continues to be from asymptomatic person. The very idea that we would criminalize wanting to protect our fellow citizens is pretty horrific.”
The federal government has recently changed its tune amid the summer COVID spike and is preparing for the upcoming fall and winter season by approving and granting emergency use authorization for updated COVID-19 vaccines and restarting its free at-home COVID tests program.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. surgeon general is calling for a “fundamental shift” in how the mental health and well-being of parents is supported and prioritized.
In a health advisory released Wednesday, Dr. Vivek Murthy, himself a father of two, said parents and caregivers are struggling amid a youth mental health crisis, financial difficulties, social media issues and more.
“Parents typically don’t talk about this all the time,” Murthy said in an interview that aired Wednesday on ABC News’ Good Morning America. “They tend to focus on their kids’ health and well-being, but there’s also this sense of shame and guilt, sometimes around struggling as a parent.”
Citing statistics that show parents are consistently more likely to report high levels of stress than other adults, Murthy wrote in the advisory there needs to be a culture shift and an all-hands-on-deck approach to supporting parents from employers, government agencies, health care providers and local communities.
According to the advisory, 48% of parents say most days, their stress is completely overwhelming, compared to 26% of other adults without kids.
“Supporting parents and caregivers will require a series of thoughtful policy changes and expanded community programs that will help ensure parents and caregivers can get time off to be with a sick child, secure affordable child care, access reliable mental health care, and benefit from places and initiatives that support social connection and community,” Murthy wrote. “It will also require us to rethink cultural norms around parenting.”
He continued, “Part of that will involve shifting how we value parenting. The work of raising a child is work, no less valuable than the work performed in a paid job and of extraordinary value when it comes to the impact on the future of society.”
According to the advisory, more than 60 million parents in the U.S. live with children under the age of 18.
The U.S. is currently one of seven countries globally that does not have any guaranteed form of universal paid leave, according to a petition to pass paid leave on a federal level in the U.S. that was delivered to all members of Congress in July.
Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau earlier this year found that, on average, families pay between 8% to 19% of their income per child on child care.
Kaitlyn Niles, a 34-year-old working mom of two, told GMA that she feels the pressure to balance her career and family and to meet the often unattainable standard of parenting set by society.
“There’s so much pressure on parents to spend all of this quality time with your kids, like sit on the ground and play pretend with your 4-year-old, you know,” Niles said. “And when you think about it logically, it’s like, there’s no way my mom was able to do that with six kids.”
Meanwhile, Eric Martinez, a father of two from Colorado, said he has had to learn new strategies in limiting his kids’ access to technology and social media.
“Navigating those conversations can be challenging because it’s new. It’s new for all of us,” he told GMA. “You know, we didn’t share this experience growing up. We didn’t have access to this technology when we were 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, so we’re kind of figuring this out as we go along.”
Murthy stated in this week’s advisory that the stressors parents are experiencing have made them vulnerable to the nationwide epidemic of loneliness and isolation.
“It also turns out that parents are struggling with loneliness at a much higher level than other adults, particularly single parents,” Murthy said, speaking with GMA.
In his advisory, Murthy noted that parents and caregivers should remember that it’s OK to set healthy boundaries and take time for themselves, which in turn will make them better supports for their family.
In addition, parents and caregivers are encouraged to “nurture connections” with other parents and caregivers and to seek professional mental health support when needed.
If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal, substance use or other mental health crises, please call or text 988. You will reach a trained crisis counselor for free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also go to 988lifeline.org.