If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or need help, call 988 or message the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
Yes, pets can get the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI or bird flu), especially if they have direct contact with an infected bird or other animal. In fact, a cat on the same dairy farm as the infected person in Texas also tested positive for HPAI. Lots of wild mammals are infected, most after direct contact with sick birds or their waste. Infections have been found in pet cats in Germany, South Korea, Thailand, and Poland, as well as in dogs in Canada and Italy. An infection in your average pet is unlikely, but if your pet spends time outdoors and hunts, eats, or sniffs around at dead wild animals - from birds to small mammals - they may be at higher risk. If your pet does get infected, their chance of passing bird flu on to your family is low, but it is possible. In 2016, a person in NYC was infected by their pet cat. If your furry friend shows signs of illness, including pink eye, respiratory, or neurological issues, contact your vet.
We’re still seeing very high rates of stomach viruses, especially norovirus, in our clients’ businesses around the country. The best thing you can do to prevent an outbreak is to emphasize the importance of staying home when sick with vomiting or diarrhea and for 48 hours after it ends. We’ve seen a lot of people returning to work too soon because they feel better, but they don’t understand just how infectious they are in the days just after their symptoms end. Our best advice if you have a few cases of stomach illnesses is to switch to daily wellness checks rather than rely on employees to call out sick if they think they should. This helps catch noro-like symptoms early and keeps people out of work for 48 hours if they had noro symptoms on their day off but feel better today.
There’s an emerging narrative as measles cases rise in the US that it’s related to undocumented immigrants entering the U.S., but the reality of the situation is much more nuanced. Nearly all cases of measles in the U.S. right now are imported from other countries and then spread within unvaccinated pockets of communities. But the Americas are very well vaccinated - Mexico has a higher vaccination rate than the U.S.! The top source-countries for imported measles cases in 2019 (our last really bad year) were the Philippines, Ukraine, Israel, Thailand, and Vietnam. This year, measles outbreaks are particularly bad in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Yemen, India, and Iraq. And as YLE points out, the recent outbreak in a Chicago migrant shelter didn’t actually start at the shelter - it just spread to a kid who was staying there and then spread more rapidly because fewer people there were vaccinated. Travel is a key part of the spread of measles to the U.S., but immigration isn’t at all the full story. Be sure to get vaccinated and get your kids vaccinated if you plan to travel outside the U.S. this year!