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Bird flu has been found in a pig for the first time in the U.S.
A 2005 electron microscope image shows an avian influenza A H5N1 virion. A pig at an Oregon farm was found to have bird flu, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday.
Cynthia Goldsmith, Jackie Katz/CDC/AP
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Cynthia Goldsmith, Jackie Katz/CDC/AP
NEW YORK — A pig at an Oregon farm was found to have bird flu, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday. It’s the first time the virus has been detected in U.S. swine and raises concerns about bird flu’s potential to become a human threat.
The infection happened at a backyard farm in Crook County, in the center of the state, where different animals share water and are housed together. Last week, poultry at the farm were found to have the virus, and testing this week found that one of the farm’s five pigs had become infected.
The farm was put under quarantine and all five pigs were euthanized so additional testing could be done. It’s not a commercial farm, and U.S. agriculture officials said there is no concern about the safety of the nation’s pork supply.
But finding bird flu in a pig raises worries that the virus may be hitting a stepping stone to becoming a bigger threat to people, said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Brown University pandemic researcher.
Pigs can be infected with multiple types of flu, and the animals can play a role in making bird viruses better adapted to humans, she explained. The 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic had swine origins, Nuzzo noted.
“If we’re trying to stay ahead of this virus and prevent it from becoming a threat to the broader public, knowing if it’s in pigs is crucial,” Nuzzo said.
The USDA has conducted genetic tests on the farm’s poultry and has not seen any mutations that suggest the virus is gaining an increased ability to spread to people. That indicates the current risk to the public remains low, officials said.
A different strain of the bird flu virus has been reported in pigs outside the U.S. in the past, and it did not trigger a human pandemic.
“It isn’t a one-to-one relationship, where pigs get infected with viruses and they make pandemics,” said Troy Sutton, a Penn State researcher who studies flu viruses in animals.
This version of bird flu — known as Type A H5N1 — has been spreading widely in the U.S. among wild birds, poultry, cows and a number of other animals. Its persistence increases the chances that people will be exposed and potentially catch it, officials say.
It isn’t necessarily surprising that a pig infection was detected, given that so many other animals have had the virus, experts said.
The Oregon pig infection “is noteworthy, but does it change the calculation of the threat level? No it doesn’t,” Sutton said. If the virus starts spreading more widely among pigs and if there are ensuing human infections, “then we’re going to be more concerned.”
So far this year, nearly 40 human cases have been reported — in California, Colorado, Washington, Michigan, Texas and Missouri — with mostly mild symptoms, including eye redness, reported. All but one of the people had been to contact with infected animals.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
The U.S. Supreme Court
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to allow Virginia to use a new congressional map that favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House seats. The map was a key part of Democrats’ effort to counter the Republican redistricting wave set off by President Trump.
The new map was drawn by Democrats and approved by Virginia voters in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4-to-3 vote declared the referendum, and by extension the new map, null and void because lawmakers failed to follow the proper procedures to get the issue on the ballot, violating the state constitution.
Virginia Democrats and the state’s attorney general then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to put into effect the map approved by the voters, which yields four more likely Democratic congressional seats. In their emergency application, they argued the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” in its decision on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.” Further, they asserted the decision “overrode the will of the people” by ordering Virginia to “conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”
Republican legislators countered that it would be improper for the U.S. Supreme Court to wade into a purely state law controversy — especially since the Democrats had not raised any federal claims in the lower court.
Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Republicans without explanation leaving in place the state court ruling that voided the Democratic-friendly maps.
The court’s decision not to intervene was its latest in emergency requests for intervention on redistricting issues. In December, the high court OK’d Texas using a gerrymandered map that could help the GOP win five more seats in the U.S. House. In February, the court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map, adopted to offset Texas’s map. Then in March, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the redrawing of a New York map expected to flip a Republican congressional district Democratic.
And perhaps most importantly, in April, the high court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map was a racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. That decision immediately set off a flurry of redistricting efforts, particularly in the South, where Republican legislators immediately began redrawing congressional maps to eliminate long established majority Black and Hispanic districts.
An explosion and fire drew a large emergency response on Friday to a lumber mill in the Midcoast region of Maine, officials said.
The State Police and fire marshal’s investigators responded to Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, about 72 miles northeast of Portland, said Shannon Moss, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Mike Larrivee, the director of the Waldo County Regional Communications Center, said the number of victims was unknown, cautioning that “the information we’re getting from the scene is very vague.”
“We’ve sent every resource in the county to that area, plus surrounding counties,” he said.
Footage from the scene shared by WABI-TV showed flames burning through the roof of a large structure as heavy, dark smoke billowed skyward.
The Associated Press reported that at least five people were injured, and that county officials were considering the incident a “mass casualty event.”
Catherine Robbins-Halsted, an owner and vice president at Robbins Lumber, told reporters at the scene that all of the company’s employees had been accounted for.
Gov. Janet T. Mills of Maine said on social media that she had been briefed on the situation and urged people to avoid the area.
“I ask Maine people to join me in keeping all those affected in their thoughts,” she said.
Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said on social media that he was aware of the fire and explosion.
“As my team and I seek out more information, I am praying for the safety and well-being of first responders and everyone else on-site,” he said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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