• Yesterday the Trump administration appealed the March ruling of Massachusetts federal judge Brian Murphy that blocked changes to the US childhood immunization schedule championed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The judge had ruled the changes violated the Administrative Procedure Act, as did Kennedy’s reconstitution of the federal advisory board that makes recommendations on clinical use of vaccines. According to the Associated Press, the government’s filing was one sentence long and did not explain why the stay should be lifted.
• Today in the Washington Post National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya MD, PhD, who has also been serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said he was defending science when he blocked the publication of a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report study showing strong protection against hospitalization by last year’s COVID-19 vaccines. Several anonymous CDC employees told major news outlets last month Bhattacharya blocked the publication of the report as a political move. In his rebuttal, Bhattacharya maintained he had issues with the methodology of the test-negative study, which has been used for years for vaccine efficacy studies. “Scientific disagreement is not interference,” he wrote. “When methodological limitations could meaningfully affect findings—especially on an issue as consequential as vaccine effectiveness—it is not only appropriate but necessary to pause, question, and scrutinize.” Bhattacharya also said the CDC will be launching a new peer-reviewed journal in the coming months and relaunch the Public Health Grand Rounds to “expand opportunities for open scientific dialogue.”
• Officials in Carson City, Nevada, have confirmed a single case of hantavirus in the Quad-County region, but said there is no increased public health threat to the general public at this time. Hantavirus is a respiratory infection that can carry a case-fatality rate of up to 38%. The virus is spread through inhaling particles of infected rodent droppings and urine. According to the officials, rodents that can spread the virus include the white-footed deer mouse, which inhabits northern Nevada.

Avian flu detections among both commercial poultry and wild birds have dropped significantly this past week, per the latest updates from the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

Only one new poultry detection was reported this week, in Meade County, South Dakota, affecting 60 birds. This is the ninth facility in either North or South Dakota to be hit with H5N1 in April.

In the past 30 days, APHIS has tracked avian flu in 15 commercial flocks and eight backyard flocks across the country, with 660,000 birds affected. So far this year, February was the most active month for avian flu, with 11.41 million poultry affected. 

In wild-bird infections, gulls in San Diego County, California, and a bald eagle in Clay County, Florida, are among the 12 detections recorded by APHIS in the past week.