Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
To Curb Rabies, US Makes It Tougher For Dogs To Enter The Country
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new rules Wednesday aimed at preventing dogs with rabies from coming into the United States. Under the new regulations, all dogs entering the U.S. must appear healthy, must be at least six months old, must have received a microchip, and the owner must verify the animal either has a valid rabies vaccine or has not been in a country where rabies is endemic in the last six months. Dogs coming from a country that is considered at high risk for rabies and who received a rabies vaccine from another country must meet additional criteria. (Stein, 5/8)
The Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) reports a cow in Powder River County has tested positive for rabies. The DOL says the cow was tested after showing neurological symptoms consistent with rabies. The animal is the first confirmed case of rabies in Montana in 2024 and is the first case not in a bat in Powder River County since 2022. (5/8)
On bird flu —
Since March, when the first reported cases of H5N1 bird flu began showing up in dairy cattle in Texas, the Food and Drug Administration has been asking farmers to discard any milk from infected animals. Initially, spotting tainted milk was believed to be fairly easy because cows that get sick with H5N1 begin producing milk that is thick and yellowish. (Molteni, 5/8)
Twenty-seven years ago today, a 3-year-old boy in Hong Kong developed a sore throat, spiked a fever, and started to cough. Six days later, he was hospitalized; six days after that, he died of acute respiratory distress caused by viral pneumonia. Testing showed the toddler, who’d had contact with sick chickens before becoming ill, had been infected with H5N1 bird flu. (Branswell, 5/9)
Nichola Hill has been studying bird flu for more than a decade, but it wasn’t until last month that she truly came to fear it. The University of Massachusetts Boston researcher was standing on a spit of windswept beach on Nantucket, surrounded on three sides by the North Atlantic and swathed head to toe in protective gear. Dead birds lay along the stretch of shoreline. ... The virus had arrived in her own backyard. And it suddenly felt unstoppable. (Piore, 5/8)
