Enlarge / A recall notice is posted next to Boar's Head meats that are displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Rafael, California. (credit: Getty | Justin Sullivan )

A third person has died in a nationwide bacterial outbreak linked to Boar's Head brand deli meats. Last week, the company recalled more than 7 million pounds of its meats , which was in addition to a recall of over 200,000 pounds of meat from July 26. In all, 71 types of products made between May 10, 2024, and July 29, 2024, and sold nationwide have been recalled.

According to an update Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the outbreak has now sickened a total of 43 people, an increase from 34 last week. There have been 43 hospitalizations, up from 33 last week. The illnesses are reported from 13 states. The three deaths in the outbreak include one from Illinois and one from New Jersey, and the newly reported death is from Virginia. The CDC expects the tally of illnesses so far to be a significant undercount of actual cases, and additional states may be affected.

The illnesses in the outbreak are caused by Listeria monocytogenes , a foodborne bacterium that is particularly dangerous to people who are pregnant, people aged 65 years or older, and people who have weakened immune systems. In these high-risk groups, the bacteria are more likely to move beyond the gastrointestinal system to cause an invasive infection called listeriosis. During pregnancy, listeriosis can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, or a life-threatening infection in newborns. For non-pregnant people who develop listeriosis, nearly 90 percent require hospitalization, and one in six die.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Peter Cade )

Wild migratory birds likely spread a deadly strain of bird flu to dairy cows in Texas and Kansas, state and federal officials announced this week.

It is believed to be the first time the virus, a highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), has been found in cows in the US. Last week, officials in Minnesota confirmed finding an HPAI case in a young goat , marking the first time the virus has been found in a domestic ruminant in the US.

According to the Associated Press , officials with the Texas Animal Health Commission confirmed the flu virus is the Type A H5N1 strain, which has been ravaging bird populations around the globe for several years . The explosive, ongoing spread of the virus has led to many spillover events into mammals, making epidemiologists anxious that the virus could adapt to spread widely in humans.

Enlarge (credit: Raymond Gehman / Getty Images )

People in the US transmitted the pandemic coronavirus to white-tailed deer at least 109 times, and the animals widely spread the virus among themselves, with a third of the deer tested in a large government-led study showing signs of prior infection. The work also suggests that the ubiquitous ruminants returned the virus to people in kind at least three times.

The findings, announced this week by the US Department of Agriculture, are in line with previous research, which suggested that white-tailed deer can readily pick up SARS-CoV-2 from humans, spread it to each other , and, based on at least one instance in Canada, transmit the virus back to humans .

But the new study , led by the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), provides a broader picture of deer transmission dynamics in the US and ultimately bolsters concern that white-tailed deer have the potential to be a virus reservoir. That is, populations of deer can acquire and harbor SARS-CoV-2 viral lineages, which can adapt to their new hosts and spill back over to humans, causing new waves of infection. It's conceivable that viruses moving from deer to humans could at some point qualify as new variants, potentially with the ability to dodge our immune protections built up from past infection and vaccination.

Enlarge / Coronavirus has swept through mink farms in Europe. (credit: Getty | Viktor Drachev )

The pandemic coronavirus has made its way onto two mink farms in Utah, leading to “unusually large numbers” of dead animals, according to a Tuesday announcement by the US Department of Agriculture.

These are the first reported cases of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, infecting mink in the country. For months, authorities in European countries, including the Netherlands, Denmark, and Spain, have reported outbreaks in mink pelt farms, leading to the culling of more than a million of the soft, furry mammals. From laboratory experiments, it’s also clear that ferrets, a relative of minks, are also readily infected with the novel coronavirus.

The affected farms in Utah reported cases of COVID-19 in people working on the farms, who may have spread the infection to the animals.

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