The mystery behind an unknown illness that has killed dozens in the Democratic Republic of Congo just 48 hours after they first showed symptoms deepened after the World Health Organization on Friday offered a new theory that seemingly contradicts African medical experts.

At least 60 people have died and more than 1,000 have been sickened in Congo’s Équateur Province by the illness, which is characterized by “fever, headache, chills, sweating, stiff neck, muscle aches, multiple joint pain and body aches, a runny or...

With reports of the first human death from bird flu in the US, some Americans are feeling an uncomfortable flashback to the early days of Covid-19, when infectious disease experts were talking about a new virus that was sending people to the hospital with respiratory infections. Although both viruses can cause breathing problems, they are very different.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency due to H5N1, more commonly known as avian influenza or bird flu.

The emergency follows an outbreak of the virus among dairy cows in Southern California farms, according to the news release on the governor’s website.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California declared on Wednesday that the outbreak of bird flu among the state’s dairy cattle constituted an emergency, a stark acknowledgment of the increasing seriousness of the contagion’s spread.

California was not among the first states to detect the bird flu virus, H5N1, in dairy cattle. But since the first identification of an infected herd in late August, the state’s agriculture department has found the virus in 645 dairies, about half of them in the past 30 days alone.

New test results released by the US Food and Drug Administration on Friday found that bird flu virus is making its way from dairy farms and into milk processing plants but also confirmed that the commonly used flash pasteurization method fully neutralizes the virus.

The FDA collected and tested 275 bulk samples of raw milk collected from farms in four states where herds had tested positive for H5N1, or bird flu. The samples were collected between April 18 and 27.

Scientists tracking the spread of bird flu are increasingly concerned that gaps in surveillance may keep them several steps behind a new pandemic, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen leading disease experts.

Many of them have been monitoring the new subtype of H5N1 avian flu in migratory birds since 2020. But the spread of the virus to 129 dairy herds in 12 U.S. states, opens new tab signals a change that could bring it closer to becoming transmissible between humans. Infections also have been found in other mammals, from alpacas to house cats.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday that the strain of bird flu currently circulating among dairy cattle appears to be only transmissible via mammary glands, or udders, rather than respiratory droplets, a finding that gives officials greater optimism about managing the risks facing dairy workers.

Experts are warning health care providers to watch out for new and “highly contagious” forms of ringworm.

This comes after the publication of a new report by doctors at New York University’s Langone Health in JAMA Dermatology detailing the first reported case in the United States of a sexually transmitted fungal infection.

A new report on the first human bird flu case tied to the outbreak in cows in the United States suggests that the Texas man may be the first detected case of the H5N1 virus transmitting from a mammal to a person.

Nearly 900 people in 23 countries have been infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus since it started spreading from Southeast Asia in late 2003. But previous human cases were all linked to transmission from infected birds, typically domestic poultry.