The U.S. is dealing with the country's largest outbreak of bird flu in humans — and officials suspect that high temperatures are the culprit.
What's happening?
The Guardian reported on the outbreak in Colorado — a state that saw one of the first outbreaks of bird flu (H5N1) in dairy cows earlier this year.
After hens at an industrial farm tested positive for H5N1, workers had to cull them by hand. The workers all wore personal protective equipment (PPE) to handle the infected flock, but officials are theorizing that extreme heat reduced the PPE's effectiveness.
With temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside — and even higher inside the warehouses — it was difficult to maintain a protective seal on masks and goggles. The Guardian cited Nirav Shah with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who said that the cooling fans inside the warehouses also spread the virus via feathers and detritus.
Four people on the farm have already tested positive for the virus, and more cases are expected to be confirmed in the coming weeks.
Why is this concerning?
Bird flu is highly dangerous to humans. The World Health Organization reported a mortality rate of over 50%. But even more concerning to officials is the fact that transmission was likely amplified due to extreme heat.
Soaring atmospheric temperatures around the world have been identified as contributing factors in disease transmission for several reasons. First of all, heat does interfere with the effectiveness of otherwise successful manual prevention via PPE. But heat and changes in weather also change the migratory patterns of H5N1-infected birds, putting unsuspecting populations at risk.
"When you change a global system like climate so profoundly, small shifts can have seismic impacts, sometimes in unexpected ways," the Guardian quoted Alexandra Phelan with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
One instance of this happened in 2021 when a group of infected wild birds managed an otherwise impossible flight from northern Europe to Iceland and then to Newfoundland.
"One reason it happened is because of unusually strong winds," said Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt of the University of Montreal, the Guardian reported. "It's not just the extreme heat. It's the fact that you have unusual climate events."
What's being done?
The CDC is looking into developing a vaccine for cows, as dairy cattle have been the source of other human cases of bird flu this year.
However, this still leaves the transmission path directly from birds to humans open — and it's only going to become more likely as the planet continues to warm.
"Across all areas, governments need to actively and urgently incorporate climate considerations into all health and safety measures more than simply at the surface level," Phelan concluded.
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