Category: Flu Vaccine

Another human case of bird flu linked to sick dairy cows has been detected in Michigan, marking the third farmworker diagnosed with the illness in the United States since March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. None of the cases are connected.

This is the second farmworker in Michigan in a week to be diagnosed with the illness. And a dairy worker in Texas was diagnosed in March. In those cases, the patients' only sign of illness was pinkeye, or conjunctivitis.

This latest case is different, however, because the patient also had upper respiratory symptoms, including sore throat, cough and congestion.

During a media briefing Thursday, Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC's principal deputy director, said there's no indication yet that the virus, an A strain of influenza called H5N1, is spreading from person to person, although the risk does increase with respiratory symptoms.

"Simply put, someone who's coughing may be more likely to transmit the virus than someone who has an eye infection like conjunctivitis," he said.

The CDC is performing genetic testing on samples of the virus taken from the patient to look for changes that would indicate whether its mutating in ways that would allow it to be more transmissible. Those results could be available within days.

The latest patient also had eye discomfort and watery eyes, but it was unclear whether the person had been diagnosed with pinkeye. Like in the previous cases, the patient was given Tamiflu and was reportedly recovering.

Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said that neither of the sickened Michigan workers had been wearing full personal protective equipment, or PPE, when they became infected.

With the first case in Michigan, eye symptoms occurred after a direct splash of infected milk to the eye. With this case, respiratory symptoms occurred after direct exposure to an infected cow," Bagdasarian wrote in a press announcement. "PPE is an important tool in preventing spread."

All of the farmworkers at this latest Michigan dairy are being monitored for symptoms. The CDC recommended that anyone who comes into contact with a sick cow watch for symptoms for 10 days.

As many as 67 herds in nine states have been affected, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. In addition to herds in Michigan, dairy cattle in Colorado, Kansas, Idaho, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota and Texas have also tested positive for bird flu.

Given the extent of the spread of this virus in dairy cows, additional human cases in people with higher risk exposures would not be surprising, the CDC said in a press release.

Federal health officials said that the risk of bird flu to the general public remains low, and that their focus continues to be on the potential risks among dairy workers.

"We should remain alert, not be alarmed," Shah said. The CDC said that its influenza surveillance systemshave not picked up any unusual flu activity.

The Department of Health and Human Services previously said that the government had started the "fill and finish" process of about 4.8 million doses of a bird flu vaccine. That process is likely to last until later this summer, said David Boucher, director of infectious diseases preparedness at HHS Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response

At that point, the Food and Drug Administration would have to consider whether it is necessary to authorize such a vaccine.

Boucher said it would premature to speculate on who might be first in line for the shots.

This is the fourth case of H5N1 overall in the U.S. An inmate in Coloradowho had been working on a farm culling birds suspected to be infected with bird flu was diagnosed in 2022. His only symptom was fatigue.

Globally, less than 1,000 cases of H5N1 in humans have been identified. CDC data shows that more than half of those patients died, but that death rate may be an overestimate as mild cases may go undetected.

TheCDC recommendsthat anyone in contact with dairy cattle including bedding and animal feces wear protective equipment, including safety glasses, waterproof aprons and boots that can be sanitized.

The agency also said that people should not drink unpasteurized raw milk.

Erika Edwards is a health and medical news writer and reporter for NBC News and "TODAY."

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CDC says third person infected with bird flu with a new symptom - NBC News

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The bird flu outbreak in U.S. dairy cows is prompting development of new, next-generation mRNA vaccinesakin to COVID-19 shotsthat are being tested in both animals and people.

Next month, the U.S. Agriculture Department is to begin testing a vaccine developed by University of Pennsylvania researchers by giving it to calves. The idea: If vaccinating cows protects dairy workers, that could mean fewer chances for the virus to jump into people and mutate in ways that could spur human-to-human spread.

Meanwhile. the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been talking to manufacturers about possible mRNA flu vaccines for people that, if needed, could supplement millions of bird flu vaccine doses already in government hands.

"If there's a pandemic, there's going to be a huge demand for vaccine," said Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. "The more different (vaccine manufacturing) platforms that can respond to that, the better."

The bird flu virus has been spreading among more animal species in scores of countries since 2020. It was detected in U.S. dairy herds in March, although investigators think it may have been in cows since December. This week, the USDA announced it had been found in alpacas for the first time.

At least three peopleall workers at farms with infected cowshave been diagnosed with bird flu, although the illnesses were considered mild.

But earlier versions of the same H5N1 flu virus have been highly lethal to humans in other parts of the world. Officials are taking steps to be prepared if the virus mutates in a way to make it more deadly or enables it to spread more easily from person to person.

Traditionally, most flu vaccines are made via an egg-based manufacturing process that's been used for more than 70 years. It involves injecting a candidate virus into fertilized chicken eggs, which are incubated for several days to allow the viruses to grow. Fluid is harvested from the eggs and is used as the basis for vaccines, with killed or weakened virus priming the body's immune system.

Rather than eggsalso vulnerable to bird flu-caused supply constraintssome flu vaccine is made in giant vats of cells.

Officials say they already have two candidate vaccines for people that appear to be well-matched to the bird flu virus in U.S. dairy herds. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used the circulating bird flu virus as the seed strain for them.

The government has hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses in pre-filled syringes and vials that likely could go out in a matter of weeks, if needed, federal health officials say.

They also say they have bulk antigen that could generate nearly 10 million more doses that could be filled, finished and distributed in a matter of a few months. CSL Seqirus, which manufactures cell-based flu vaccine, this week announced that the government hired it to fill and finish about 4.8 million of those doses. The work could be done by late summer, U.S. health officials said this week.

But the production lines for flu vaccines are already working on this fall's seasonal shotswork that would have to be interrupted to produce millions more doses of bird flu vaccine. So the government has been pursuing another, quicker approach: the mRNA technology used to produce the primary vaccines deployed against COVID-19.

These messenger RNA vaccines are made using a small section of genetic material from the virus. The genetic blueprint is designed to teach the body how to make a protein used to build immunity.

The pharmaceutical company Moderna already has a bird flu mRNA vaccine in very early-stage human testing. In a statement, Moderna confirmed that "we are in discussions with the U.S. government on advancing our pandemic flu candidate."

Similar work has been going on at Pfizer. Company researchers in December gave human volunteers an mRNA vaccine against a bird flu strain that's similar tobut not exactly the same asthe one in cows. Since then, researchers have performed a lab experiment exposing blood samples from those volunteers to the strain seen in dairy farms, and saw a "notable increases in antibody responses," Pfizer said in a statement.

As for the vaccine for cows, Penn immunologist Scott Hensley worked with mRNA pioneer and Nobel laureate Drew Weissman to produce the experimental doses. Hensley said that the vaccine is similar to the Moderna one for people.

In first-step testing, mice and ferrets produced high levels of bird flu virus-fighting antibodies after vaccination.

In another experiment, researchers vaccinated one group of ferrets and deliberately infected them, and then compared what happened to ferrets that hadn't been vaccinated. All the vaccinated animals survived and the unvaccinated did not, Hensley said.

"The vaccine was really successful," said Webby, whose lab did that work last year in collaboration with Hensley.

The cow study will be akin to the first-step testing initially done in smaller animals. The plan is initially for about 10 calves to be vaccinated, half with one dose and half with another. Then their blood will be drawn and examined to look for how much bird flu-fighting antibodies were produced.

The USDA study first will have to determine the right dose for such a large animal, Hensley said, before testing if it protects them like it did smaller animals.

What "scares me the most is the amount of interaction between cattle and humans," Hensley said.

"We're not talking about an animal that lives on a mountain top," he said. "If this was a bobcat outbreak I'd feel bad for the bobcats, but that's not a big human risk."

If a vaccine reduces the amount of virus in the cow, "then ultimately we reduce the chance that a mutant virus that spreads in humans is going to emerge," he said.

2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Scientists are testing mRNA vaccines to protect cows and people against bird flu - Phys.org

Moderna is nearing a deal with the US government to fund a late-stage trial of its bird flu vaccine, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

Millions of dollars of federal funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority could come as soon as next month, according to the report.

The Cambridge-based biotechnology company declined to share specifics but confirmed to the Globe that Moderna is in talks with the government and has finished testing a vaccine candidate on volunteers in a trial, with data expected soon. The vaccine appears to protect people from the bird flu variant that is circulating in the United States right now, according to Moderna.

We remain committed to using our mRNA platform to respond to public health concerns, the company said Thursday.

Moderna is the largest homegrown drug maker in Massachusetts by head count, with more than 4,400 employees in the state of as late 2023, the company has said.

The bird flu, which can be deadly, is an influenza virus that was initially discovered in the mid-1990s and became especially prominent in 2003, following a significant outbreak in poultry in China, according to previous Globe coverage. Human cases are not common and the public health risk is low, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC reports that 48 states have bird flu outbreaks in their poultry farms, which amounts to more than 92 million birds impacted by the virus.

Modernas potential agreement with the federal government comes as it faced a decline in COVID-19 vaccine sales and won a key battle in a vaccine patent dispute with Pfizer and BioNTech. The biotech giant faced loses of about $1.2 billion during the first quarter, according to its earnings report. It is now working on therapeutic vaccines to treat cancer, the Globe previously reported.

A timeline of the agreement has not yet been announced.

As of Thursday, Modernas share price had risen nearly 40 percent since the start of April.

Material from previous Globe coverage was used in this report. Staff writer Jonathan Saltzman contributed reporting.

Esha Walia can be reached at esha.walia@globe.com.

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Moderna's bird flu vaccine could soon get funding from US government - The Boston Globe

image:

A 3D rendering shows one of the isolated antibodies, FluB-393, (blue) binding to the neuraminidase surface glycoprotein (red) of the influenza type B virus to prevent infection.

Credit: Illustration by Elad Binshtein, PhD, and Anthony Czelusniak

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have isolated human monoclonal antibodies against influenza B, a significant public health threat that disproportionately affects children, the elderly and other immunocompromised individuals.

Seasonal flu vaccines cover influenza B and the more common influenza A but do not stimulate the broadest possible range of immune responses against both viruses. In addition, people whose immune systems have been weakened by age or illness may not respond effectively to the flu shot.

Small-molecule drugs that block neuraminidase, a major surface glycoprotein of the influenza virus, can help treat early infection, but they provide limited benefit when the infection is more severe, and they are generally less effective in treating influenza B infections. Thus, another way to combat this virus is needed.

Reporting in the journal Immunity, the VUMC researchers describe how, from the bone marrow of an individual previously vaccinated against influenza, they isolated two groups of monoclonal antibodies that bound to distinct parts of the neuraminidase glycoprotein on the surface of influenza B.

One of the antibodies, FluB-400, broadly inhibited virus replication in laboratory cultures of human respiratory epithelial cells. It also protected against influenza B in animal models when given by injection or through the nostrils.

Intranasal antibody administration may be more effective and have fewer systemic side effects than more typical routes intravenous infusion or intramuscular injection in part because intranasal antibodies may trap the virus in the nasal mucus, thereby preventing infection of the underlying epithelial surface, the researchers suggested.

These findings support the development of FluB-400 for the prevention and treatment of influenza B and will help guide efforts to develop a universal influenza vaccine, they said.

Antibodies increasingly have become an interesting medical tool to prevent or treat viral infections, said the papers corresponding author, James Crowe Jr., MD. We set out to find antibodies for the type B influenza virus, which continues to be a medical problem, and we were happy to find such especially powerful molecules in our search.

Crowe, who holds the Ann Scott Carell Chair, is University Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, which has isolated monoclonal antibodies against a host of viral infections, including COVID-19.

The papers first author, Rachael Wolters, DVM, PhD, is a former graduate student in the Crowe lab. Other VUMC co-authors are Elaine Chen, PhD, Ty Sornberger, Luke Myers, Laura Handal, Taylor Engdahl, Nurgen Kose, Lauren Williamson, PhD, Buddy Creech, MD, and Katherine Gibson-Corley, DVM, PhD.

This study was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grants T32AI112541, K01OD036063 and U01AI150739, NIH-HHS contracts 75N93019C00074 and 75N93019C00073, and the Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers program of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Illustration: A 3D rendering shows one of the isolated antibodies, FluB-393, (blue) binding to the neuraminidase surface glycoprotein (red) of the influenza type B virus to prevent infection.

(illustration by Elad Binshtein, PhD, and Anthony Czelusniak)

Article|Online Now PDF Figures Save Share Reprints Request Isolation of human antibodies against influenza B neuraminidase and mechanisms of protection at the airway interface

31-May-2024

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Antibodies may aid effort to fight influenza B: Study - EurekAlert

The US government is negotiating a deal to fund a late-stage trial of Modernas mRNA pandemic bird flu vaccine, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

The news comes amid one of the worst H5N1 outbreaks in the recent years, with bird flu detected in poultry farms in 48 states and dairy herds in nine states.

Federal funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) could come as soon as next month, and would also include a promise to procure doses if the phase-three trials turn out to be successful, the report said.

It is expected to total several tens of millions of dollars, and could be accompanied by a commitment to procure doses if the phase-three trials are successful, it said.

Moderna and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for a comment.

The United States, Canada and Europe have been in active talks with firms such as CSL Seqirus and GSK to acquire or manufacture H5N1 bird flu vaccines, which could be used to protect at-risk poultry and dairy workers, veterinarians and lab technicians.

Last week, a second human case of bird flu was confirmed in the United States since the virus was first detected in dairy cattle in late March.

Bird flu has fuelled concerns as the disease is increasingly spreading to mammals, with the first-ever outbreaks detected in dairy cows in the United States, raising concerns about it spreading to humans through the nations milk supply.

Since 2022, bird flu has infected more than 90 million chickens, 9,000 wild birds, 52 dairy herds and three people in the country.

Jim Pollard is an Australian journalist based in Thailand since 1999. He worked for News Ltd papers in Sydney, Perth, London and Melbourne before travelling through SE Asia in the late 90s. He was a senior editor at The Nation for 17+ years.

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US Looking to Fund Bird Flu Vaccine Trial by Moderna FT - Asia Financial

The bird flu outbreak in U.S. dairy cows is prompting development of new, next-generation mRNA vaccines akin to COVID-19 shots that are being tested in both animals and people.

This month, the U.S. Agriculture Department is to begin testing a vaccine developed by University of Pennsylvania researchers by giving it to calves. The idea: If vaccinating cows protects dairy workers, that could mean fewer chances for the virus to jump into people and mutate in ways that could spur human-to-human spread.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been talking to manufacturers about possible mRNA flu vaccines for people that, if needed, could supplement millions of bird flu vaccine doses already in government hands.

If theres a pandemic, theres going to be a huge demand for vaccine, said Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis. The more different (vaccine manufacturing) platforms that can respond to that, the better.

The bird flu virus has been spreading among more animal species in scores of countries since 2020. It was detected in U.S. dairy herds in March, although investigators think it may have been in cows since December. This week, the USDA announced it had been found in alpacas for the first time.

At least three people all workers at farms with infected cows have been diagnosed with bird flu, although the illnesses were considered mild.

But earlier versions of the same H5N1 flu virus have been highly lethal to humans in other parts of the world. Officials are taking steps to be prepared if the virus mutates in a way to make it more deadly or enables it to spread more easily from person to person.

Traditionally, most flu vaccines are made via an egg-based manufacturing process thats been used for more than 70 years. It involves injecting a candidate virus into fertilized chicken eggs, which are incubated for several days to allow the viruses to grow. Fluid is harvested from the eggs and is used as the basis for vaccines, with killed or weakened virus priming the bodys immune system.

Rather than eggs also vulnerable to bird flu-caused supply constraints some flu vaccine is made in giant vats of cells.

Officials say they already have two candidate vaccines for people that appear to be well-matched to the bird flu virus in U.S. dairy herds. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used the circulating bird flu virus as the seed strain for them.

The government has hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses in pre-filled syringes and vials that likely could go out in a matter of weeks, if needed, federal health officials say.

They also say they have bulk antigen that could generate nearly 10 million more doses that could be filled, finished and distributed in a matter of a few months. CSL Seqirus, which manufactures cell-based flu vaccine, this week announced that the government hired it to fill and finish about 4.8 million of those doses. The work could be done by late summer, U.S. health officials said this week.

But the production lines for flu vaccines are already working on this falls seasonal shots work that would have to be interrupted to produce millions more doses of bird flu vaccine. So the government has been pursuing another, quicker approach: the mRNA technology used to produce the primary vaccines deployed against COVID-19.

These messenger RNA vaccines are made using a small section of genetic material from the virus. The genetic blueprint is designed to teach the body how to make a protein used to build immunity.

The pharmaceutical company Moderna already has a bird flu mRNA vaccine in very early-stage human testing. In a statement, Moderna confirmed that we are in discussions with the U.S. government on advancing our pandemic flu candidate.

Similar work has been going on at Pfizer. Company researchers in December gave human volunteers an mRNA vaccine against a bird flu strain thats similar to but not exactly the same as the one in cows. Since then, researchers have performed a lab experiment exposing blood samples from those volunteers to the strain seen in dairy farms, and saw a notable increases in antibody responses, Pfizer said in a statement.

As for the vaccine for cows, Penn immunologist Scott Hensley worked with mRNA pioneer and Nobel laureate Drew Weissman to produce the experimental doses. Hensley said that vaccine is similar to the Moderna one for people.

In first-step testing, mice and ferrets produced high levels of bird flu virus-fighting antibodies after vaccination.

In another experiment, researchers vaccinated one group of ferrets and deliberately infected them, and then compared what happened to ferrets that hadnt been vaccinated. All the vaccinated animals survived and the unvaccinated did not, Hensley said.

The vaccine was really successful, said Webby, whose lab did that work last year in collaboration with Hensley.

The cow study will be akin to the first-step testing initially done in smaller animals. The plan is for initially about 10 calves to be vaccinated, half with one dose and half with another. Then their blood will be drawn and examined to look for how much bird flu-fighting antibodies were produced.

The USDA study first will have to determine the right dose for such a large animal, Hensley said, before testing if it protects them like it did smaller animals.

What scares me the most is the amount of interaction between cattle and humans, Hensley said.

Were not talking about an animal that lives on a mountain top, he said. If this was a bobcat outbreak Id feel bad for the bobcats, but thats not a big human risk.

If a vaccine reduces the amount of virus in the cow, then ultimately we reduce the chance that a mutant virus that spreads in humans is going to emerge, he said.

Continued here:

Scientists are testing mRNA vaccines to protect cows, people against bird flu - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

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The United States and Europe are taking steps to acquire or manufacture H5N1 bird flu vaccines that could be used to protect at-risk poultry and dairy workers, veterinarians and lab technicians, government officials said, moves influenza experts say could curb the threat of a pandemic.

U.S officials last week said they were moving bulk vaccine from CSL Seqirus that closely matches the current virus into finished shots that could provide 4.8 million doses of vaccine. European health officials told Reuters they were in talks to acquire CSL's prepandemic vaccine.

Canadian health officials said they have met with GSK, maker of Canada's seasonal flu shots, to discuss acquiring and manufacturing a prepandemic bird flu vaccine once its seasonal flu production capacity is freed up.

SECOND AMERICAN CONTRACTS BIRD FLU TIED TO DAIRY COWS AS CDC SAYS RISK OF INFECTION STILL LOW

Other countries, including the UK, are discussing how to proceed on prepandemic vaccines, scientists said.

A dairy farmer is seen herding cows in Ontario, Canada, on March 24, 2020. The U.S. and Europe are taking steps to acquire or manufacture H5N1 bird flu vaccines that could be used to protect at-risk poultry and dairy workers. (REUTERS/Alex Filipe/File Photo)

The actions follow the explosive spread of a new strain of bird flu that emerged in late 2020 and has caused unprecedented numbers of deaths among wild birds and domestic poultry and has begun infecting many mammal species.

In March, U.S. officials reported the first outbreak of the virus in dairy cattle, which has infected dozens of herds in nine states and two dairy workers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has estimated that 20% of the U.S. milk supply shows signs of the virus, indicating a wider spread is likely.

Human exposures to the virus in poultry and dairy operations could increase the risk that the virus will mutate and gain the ability to spread easily in people.

DESPITE GROWING CONCERNS OVER BIRD FLU, MANY US DAIRY WORKERS HAVE NOT RECEIVED PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT

"All of our efforts need to be focused on preventing those events from happening," said Matthew Miller, co-director of the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub at McMaster University. "Once we have widespread infections of humans, we're in big trouble."

Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, said she has been in discussions with U.S. and Canadian officials about using vaccines to protect workers following the virus' spread into new mammal species.

Dawn O'Connell of the U.S. Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response said the government is "looking closely" at the possibility of vaccinating farm workers and others in close contact with the virus.

The U.S. has contracts with CSL and GSK to test prepandemic vaccines that more closely match the circulating virus than older H5N1 vaccines in the stockpile. The U.S. is moving forward with the CSL vaccine, a Department of Health and Human Services official confirmed.

Discussions about prepandemic vaccine use are going on at government levels and among scientists in a number of places, including in the UK, said Wendy Barclay, chair in influenza virology at University College London, who also researches avian flu for the UK Health Security Agency.

If deployed strategically to dairy farmers, healthcare workers and those in close contact with infected animals, "it would put a pin in the virus," she said, although she said it was not clear if this step was necessary yet.

The UK government did not comment but said it is monitoring the situation in the U.S.

In Europe, the European Commission's Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority is working on a joint procurement of CSL Seqirus's vaccine to "potentially prevent a pandemic" sparked by individuals exposed to infected birds and animals, spokesman Stefan De Keersmaecker told Reuters.

A spokeswoman for CSL, which has contracts for pandemic influenza vaccines with 30 governments, said the company has been in talks with several governments about procuring vaccines since 2022. Those requests have accelerated with the U.S. outbreak, she said.

PREPANDEMIC STOCKPILE

The U.S. maintains a stockpile of prepandemic vaccine candidates and bulk vaccine against an array of influenza strains and conducts clinical trials to support an Emergency Use Authorization or FDA license in the event of pandemic.

Seasonal flu vaccine makers, including Sanofi, could also be asked to shift to producing pandemic flu vaccines.

The U.S. is in talks with mRNA vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna about potential pandemic vaccines.

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Dr. Richard Webby, a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital virologist who studies flu in animals and birds for the World Health Organization, said the situation in dairy cattle merits vaccine use.

"If we look at the exposure levels that some of these farmers are getting, it's high," Webby said.

The decision on how and when to use the vaccine will hinge on evidence of increased transmission, severity of disease, cases in people with no link to a dairy farm and mutations in the virus, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Principal Deputy Director Nirav Shah said.

Dutch flu virologist Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, who has conducted experiments mapping the changes necessary for bird flu to spark a pandemic, said Europe's plan is to procure the CSL vaccine for people occupationally exposed to the virus.

His lab could well be eligible if a vaccine becomes available, he said, adding, "I would certainly take it."

Excerpt from:

US, European nations seek increased vaccine production to protect workers exposed to bird flu - Fox News

There were two updates on avian influenza over the long weekend. USDA detected bird flu in beef for the first time, but the meat was not allowed to enter the nation's food supply. And media reports said U.S and European officials were stepping up development of vaccines that could prevent avian influenza from becoming a pandemic.

USDAs Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which has been monitoring beef tissue from 96 culled and condemned dairy cows, said viral particles were detected in tissue samples, including muscle, from one cow.

Meat from condemned cows [presumably ones that show signs of any disease] is prohibited from entering the food supply No meat from these dairy cattle entered the food supply.

The 96 dairy cows were diverted from the supply because federal inspectors noticed signs of illness during routine inspections of carcasses at meat processing plants. Bird flu was found in only one of those cows.

The agency also has been testing ground beef for bird flu at retail stores, but it has yet to find any sign of the virus. Even if it were to get through, the Agriculture Dept. says cooking beef to an internal temperature of 165 degrees will kill it just as cooking kills E. coli and other viruses.

Back to the vaccine: Reuters reported U.S officials were moving bulk vaccine from CSL Seqirus that closely matches the current virus into finished shots that could provide 4.8 million doses of vaccine.

European health officials told Reuters they also were in talks to acquire CSL's prepandemic vaccine. Canadian health officials said they have met with GSK, maker of Canada's seasonal flu shots, to discuss acquiring and manufacturing a prepandemic bird flu vaccine once its seasonal flu production capacity is freed up. Other countries, including the UK, are discussing how to proceed on prepandemic vaccines.

Read more:

First Bird Flu Detected in Beef; Human Anti-Pandemic Vaccines in Development - Food Processing

New Zealands decision to no longer offer free influenza vaccines for all children under 12 will likely wipe out recent gains in uptake. And it will disproportionately affect those living in deprived areas and with a high risk of disease.

Influenza accounts for more than half of all potentially vaccine-preventable hospitalisations of children under 14 in New Zealand. But those living in poorer areas are three times more likely to be hospitalised due to a lung infection.

Health New Zealand recommends annual vaccination for all children from the age of six months. During the 2022 winter season, New Zealands medicines funding agency Pharmac made flu vaccines free for all children aged three to 12. In 2023, this was extended to start at six months of age.

But in 2024, the funding was cut back to the previous criteria. This means only children with a history of significant respiratory illness, certain long-term medical conditions, or those hospitalised for any respiratory illness when aged under four are eligible for free vaccines.

We compared how many New Zealand children received the flu vaccine before (2018-21) and during (2022-23) universal funding and found substantially higher uptake when vaccines were free.

In 2018, before the COVID pandemic and free influenza vaccines for all children, only 4.4% of those under five received the vaccine. The uptake was lower in tamariki Mori (1.9%) and Pacific children (3.1%).

Flu vaccine uptake increased in 2020, likely because of general concern about respiratory illness during the first year of the COVID pandemic. But it declined again in 2021 to below 2018 levels.

Following universal funding in 2022, uptake almost tripled for under-fives (4.4% in 2018 to 12% in 2023). However, there were substantial differences by ethnicity. Uptake was highest in Asian children (21.3%) and lowest in Pacific children (8.0%) and tamariki Mori (4.9%).

The trends by age group give some insight into the impact of funding. In 2022, uptake increased more than two-fold in age groups where all children were eligible for free vaccines. In 2023, we saw a three-fold increase in uptake in the only newly eligible age group (six to 12 months). Overall, 12% of children of all ages except the oldest (nine to 12) were vaccinated.

Focusing flu vaccination funding only on those at the highest risk is a step backwards for New Zealand and will likely reduce uptake. In contrast, Australia has funded flu vaccines for all children aged six months to five years since 2019.

Acute respiratory hospitalisations from any cause are almost three times higher in New Zealand than in comparable countries. A recent report shows influenza accounted for 56% of all potentially vaccine-preventable hospitalisations between 2016 and 2020 in children under 14 years. This is more than varicella, measles, whooping cough and meningococcal disease combined.

It is not just children with medical conditions who get severely sick from influenza. In Australian children under five, less than half of those hospitalised due to influenza had long-term medical conditions, although these children were more likely to require intensive care.

While deaths from influenza are rare in children, over half of US children who died from it during the 2023-2024 winter season were previously healthy.

The effectiveness of the influenza vaccine varies from season to season, depending on circulating strains and how well that years vaccine is matched. But vaccination remains the main way to protect against severe influenza.

Studies in children found the influenza vaccine reduces the risk of hospitalisation by about 50%, and even higher for some influenza strains and years.

Studies in countries comparable to New Zealand (UK, Italy and Finland) looking at the cost effectiveness of flu vaccines found universal funding to be highly cost-effective compared with a high-risk approach.

In 2024, Pharmac stated:

We considered widening access to the flu vaccine [] we would like to fund in the future, depending on available budget.

In contrast, the comparable Australian advisory committee concluded in 2019 that universal influenza vaccination for children under five met its cost-effectiveness criteria.

Influenza causes more illness in young children, including severe disease requiring hospitalisation, than we generally recognise. An age-based universal programme would almost certainly result in substantially higher uptake, including in higher-risk children, than a targeted approach.

We believe the high and inequitable burden of influenza in young New Zealand children and the low cost of influenza vaccines, compared to other vaccines currently funded, should prompt urgent reconsideration of universal funding, at least for children below the age of five.

If universal funding is not considered affordable in the Pharmac budget, the case for restoring free vaccines for all Mori and Pacific children is strong given their high burden of disease.

As for the influenza immunisation programme in general, it is not just about funding. We must engage with the community to raise awareness of the severity of flu in children and the effectiveness and safety of vaccines, along with improving access to immunisation services.

We would like to acknowledge the contribution from colleagues Ewan Smith and Emily Dwight.

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Flu vaccines are no longer free for all under-12s in NZ children living in poverty and at higher risk will bear the brunt - The Conversation...

A new studypublished in Vaccine reveals that repeated flu vaccination does not appear to significantly weaken the protective effect of annual vaccines in older recipients.

The study looked at confirmed flu cases among those 60 and older in Ningbo, China, over four influenza seasons from 2018 to 2022. The researchers compared 1,976 cases of influenza-positive and 1,976 cases of influenza-negative controls.

In China, annual flu vaccines are recommended for those 6 months and older, but the vaccination rate among the older population remains significantly below the World Health Organization's target of 75%.

To increase vaccination uptake, the local government in Ningbo has funded free influenza vaccinations to residents aged 65 and older since 2020.

The authors of the study wanted to examine the relationship between repeated flu vaccinations and vaccine protectiveness. To do so, each flu-positive patient was matched with a negative control. Participants were considered vaccinated if they received one dose of flu vaccine at least 14days before the onset of symptoms during the corresponding influenza season.

Participants were grouped into four categories: 1) not vaccinated in either the current or prior season; (2) vaccinated in the previous season only; (3) vaccinated in the current season only; (4) and vaccinated in both seasons.

Overall, 11.6% were vaccinated in two consecutive seasons, 16.8% were vaccinated only in the current season, 6.5% were vaccinated only in the previous season, and 65.1% were not vaccinated.

Being older, male, and having hypertension were all factors associated with consecutive vaccination. The authors found no significant increased risk of influenza in consecutively vaccinated participants compared to those receiving the vaccine only in the current season (adjusted odds ratio [aOR],1.22; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.94 to 1.58).

The risk of influenza was found to be elevated in individuals who received the vaccine only in the previous season (aOR, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.15 to 2.10). The highest risk was in those who had not received the vaccine in either of the consecutive two seasons (aOR, 3.39; 95% CI, 2.80 to 4.09).

Elderly individuals who received the vaccine only in the previous season or those who did not receive any vaccine for two seasons are facing a significantly increased risk of influenza infection.

"While there was a trend towards a reduction in protective efficacy, this difference did not attain statistical significance. Additionally, we have also observed a high degree of stability in this phenomenon across different influenza seasons. On the other hand, elderly individuals who received the vaccine only in the previous season or those who did not receive any vaccine for two seasons are facing a significantly increased risk of influenza infection," the authors concluded.

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Repeated flu vaccination in older people not linked to lower protection - University of Minnesota Twin Cities