Avian flu flared up in Minnesota poultry operations last month after a nearly eight-month reprieve, forcing farmers to depopulate eight turkey barns.

A vaccine exists for this highly pathogenic avian influenza, which could be used against the nearly four-year outbreak that has wiped out 9.2 million birds in Minnesota alone.

Vietnam is among the countries most affected by extreme weather, which fuels the spread of infectious diseases. Prolonged heat and humidity create ideal conditions for mosquitoes to breed, driving dengue and other vector-borne illnesses. Flooding, meanwhile, increases exposure to waterborne and digestive diseases. Together, these climate-sensitive risks underline the urgent need for early warning and response systems to protect public health.

As a number of federal policies impact availability of COVID-19 vaccines, Rhode Island is looking to preserve access through protective measures. The moves followed a recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration green-light of three new COVID-19 vaccines.

But in approving these vaccines, the FDA also restricted their use to people who are 65 years or older or have underlying health conditions. Those who are not eligible to receive the vaccine can get a prescription from a health care professional, but they must pay out of pocket prices.

Florida State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced that The Sunshine State will become the first in the nation to remove the mandatory vaccination mandate for schoolchildren. That means that by the end of 2025, kids entering public school will no longer be required to have vaccinations for contagious diseases such as Chicken Pox, Hepatitis B among others. While Dr. Ladapo says the decision will ultimately give power back to individuals are parents to decide what they put in their children’s bodies, other medial professional disagree with the decision and say a health crisis could be looming. Former Florida Surgeon General and Professor of Education at Brown University’s School of Public Health, Dr. Scott Rivkees, sat with us to talk about the ramifications that could come, not just with kids, but with public health as well.

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Welcome to “the last bite,” an end-of-week food and ag roundup from the Minnesota Star Tribune. Reach out to business reporter Brooks Johnson at brooks.johnson@startribune.com to share your news and favorite gas station food.

General Mills will be without a chief marketing officer for a time, as Doug Martin has taken the same position at a different food-ish company.

Martin is now heading up the marketing department at Wawa, a gas station chain that is pretty much the Kwik Trip of the East Coast, with a similar cult-like following thanks to its counter-serve food.

Among its many painful lessons, the COVID-19 pandemic taught us that America’s defenses against a devastating health crisis were far weaker than most had reason to expect. More than 1.2 million Americans lost their lives to COVID, the most of any country. It’s puzzling and frightening to watch the Trump Administration dismantle initiatives aimed at keeping us safe from another pandemic.

And let’s not kid ourselves; another pandemic is evolutionarily inevitable. We can’t say when it will strike or if it will be worse than COVID. (Deadly as it was, COVID proved to be far less fatal than others we’ve seen recently, like Ebola, Marburg, MERS and SARS.) But research has projected that there is about a 50 percent chance another COVID-like magnitude of a pandemic (>25 million global deaths) will hit us in the next 20 to 25 years.

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Earlier this week, President Donald Trump indicated that using acetaminophen, commonly known by its brand name Tylenol, shouldn’t be used during a pregnancy and could contribute to rising autism rates in the United States.

The claim has since been scrutinized by health officials, while also shedding light on how clinical data about pregnant women is gathered.
Alyssa Bilinski, a researcher at Brown University, joined 12 News at 4 on Wednesday to discuss Trump’s claim and the risks of medication in pregnant women.

The Pandemic Agreement, adopted by the World Health Assembly in May, is a historic step toward strengthening global systems to prevent, detect, and respond to epidemic and pandemic threats. Yet many low- and middle-income countries face significant political and technical challenges in ratifying and implementing the agreement.

No country is fully prepared for a future pandemic or epidemic. National implementation of the Pandemic Agreement will require sustained political will, policy reforms, investments in capacity building, and ongoing transparency, monitoring, and accountability.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) - Children in Florida are required to get several vaccines before they begin school. It’s a requirement supported by Dr. Scott Rivkees.

“Schools should be places where children should be able to go to without having to worry about getting vaccine preventable diseases,” he told TV20.

He was the state’s former surgeon general during Gov. Ron DeSantis’ first term and helped lead the state during the start of COVID-19.

Rivkees is now a professor at Brown University, but is sounding off on the state’s plan to eliminate vaccines mandates for children. It’s a decision made earlier this month by Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the man who replaced Rivkees who left his post in 2021.

On Monday, President Trump, flanked by the heads of the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, drew a clear link between autism and pregnant women’s use of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. He urged women to avoid the drug while pregnant unless “absolutely necessary,” claiming, “There’s no downside in not taking it.”

The White House pointed to a recent systematic review of 46 studies, in which authors urged caution in using the medication, recommending only “judicious acetaminophen use” following “medical consultation.” At the same time, many experts are stating the opposite. For example, a statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists emphasized that pregnant patients “should not be frightened away from the many benefits of acetaminophen.”

Before he set foot in 200 Independence Avenue, Washington DC, Robert F Kennedy Jr, US president Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services, had raised more than a few eyebrows from America’s medical establishment. Around 17,000, to be precise – that’s how many doctors signed a letter from the Committee to Protect Health Care urging senators to reject his nomination, saying he was “unqualified to lead” and was “actively dangerous”.

Their petition failed. Today, Kennedy Jr, better known as RFK, is head of an agency with an almost two trillion-dollar budget and a little over 80,000 employees. On Monday, speaking from the White House, Trump and the US secretary of health and human services said women should not take acetaminophen, also known by the brand name Tylenol, “during the entire pregnancy.” It was announced that the Food and Drug Administration would begin notifying doctors that the use of acetaminophen “can be associated” with an increased risk of autism, but neither Trump or Kennedy Jr provided any peer reviewed medical evidence to support this. They also raised unfounded concerns about vaccines contributing to rising rates of autism.

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President Trump tied the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy to autism and made several other claims about vaccines. William Brangham discussed those claims and the concerns about what the president said with Alycia Halladay of the Autism Science Foundation and Jennifer Nuzzo of Brown University’s School of Public Health.

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