Understanding the Threat of Bird Flu

Since 2022, a new, highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 influenza or “bird flu” has spread worldwide. In the US it has affected over a 100 million birds and for the first time, spread into dairy cows and a small, but growing, number of people. At UC Davis, experts in One Health — an approach that considers the health of people, animals and the environment together — are on high alert. 

Nothing but death

Dead silence met Marcela Uhart and her team when they arrived at the elephant seal colony at Punta Delgada, Patagonia on Oct. 10, 2023. 

“These beaches, at the peak of the breeding season, are bustling with life,” Uhart, director of the Latin American Program at the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, told a webinar in May. “The masters of the beach, the bull seals, interactions with mothers and their pups, that was not there. All we saw was carcass after carcass. … There was nothing but death.”