COVID is rising in California. Here's how to protect yourself from FLiRT subvariants It's too early to know if FLiRT will be a major change in the COVID picture; so far impacts have been small. But officials are urging Californians to be prepared. Rong-Gong Lin II LA Times

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3 Things to Know About FLiRT, the New Coronavirus Strains A Yale Medicine expert discusses the FLiRT strains, two new COVID subvariants that emerged in in spring 2024. Yale Medicine

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Current COVID boosters offer good protection against severe outcomes but less so against JN.1 The current COVID-19 boosters targeting the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant are still offering solid protection against infection, hospitalizations, and death, but are somewhat limited in efficacy against illnesses caused by the JN.1 subvariant, now the dominant strain in the United States, according to a research letter yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine. CIDRAP

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Bird flu infects third US dairy worker; Michigan set to expand testing A third U.S. dairy worker tested positive for bird flu after exposure to infected cows, and was the first to suffer respiratory problems, U.S. officials said on Thursday. Leah Douglas,Julie Steenhuysen,Tom Polansek Reuters

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A man who allegedly stole $6 billion in COVID relief was arrested The DOJ says YunHe Wang offered free VPN programs that infected millions of computers Quartz

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The DOJ’s statement claims that 911 S5 customers allegedly targeted certain COVID-19 relief programs. It says that 560,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims originated from compromised IP addresses, resulting in a loss exceeding $5.9 billion for the United States.

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WHO emergencies team faces funding crunch as health crises multiply The World Health Organization's emergencies department is facing “existential threats” as multiplying health crises have left it so short of cash that it needed emergency funds to pay staff salaries at the end of last year, an independent report said. Jennifer Rigby Reuters

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COVID can cause new health problems even 3 years after infection, study finds. 'We don’t know what’s going to happen at 10 years' A new report reinforces that the virus is not going away. Fortune

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Pregnant women with COVID-19 may be at lower risk for long COVID New data from the RECOVERY trial show that women who contracted COVID-19 during pregnancy had a lower risk of developing long COVID, or post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), than other women, according to a study in eClinicalMedicine. CIDRAP

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Farmers must kill 4.2 million chickens after bird flu hits Iowa egg farm More than 4 million chickens in Iowa will have to be killed after a case of the highly pathogenic bird flu was detected at a large egg farm. AP News

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Crews are in the process of killing 4.2 million chickens after the disease was found at a farm in Sioux County, Iowa, making it the latest in a yearslong outbreak that now is affecting dairy cattle as well. Last week, the virus was confirmed at an egg farm west of Minneapolis, Minnesota, leading to the slaughter of nearly 1.4 million chickens.

As avian flu hops to cows and at least two humans, migrant farm workers are at risk Officials are now incentivizing testing, but experts say workers need protective equipment and paid sick leave to prevent further spread The Guardian

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Migrants must be a focus of catch-up vaccination campaigns, warn global health experts

More needs to be done to ensure migrant communities are a key focus of receiving vital routine vaccinations to ensure health equity. That is according to Dr. Sally Hargreaves from St George's, University of London, whose research is published as part of the new migrant health Series in The Lancet Regional Health—Europe and is speaking at a World Health Assembly side event at The Geneva Health Forum.

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