S FR E P O RTE R .CO M / TH E I N TE R FAC E
LANL scientist Jeanne Fair is part of an international collaboration to study—and hopefully prevent—avian flu outbreaks
BY JULIA GOLDBERG @votergirl
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n early June, China reported a 41-year-old man had been infected with H10N3—a type of avian influenza—marking the first case of human infection from that particular strain. I will admit the news passed me by as I, like so many others, remained focused on the continued repercussions of another zoonotic virus, SARS-CoV-2, the culprit behind COVID-19. But for scientists like Jeanne Fair, the event emphasizes the fortuitous timing of a new initiative kicking off this fall: the Avian Zoonotic Disease Network. A scientist with Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Biosecurity and Public Health division, Fair’s career has focused on epidemiology and animal disease ecology. As part of that work, she spent three years as the regional science manager in the Middle East and Central Asia region for the US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction program, which is supplying the grant for the new avian project. Along with researchers at Michigan State University, CRDF Global and in Georgia, Jordan and Ukraine, the work will specifically focus on the Mediterranean and Black Sea Flyway, the main migration route for birds between Africa and Europe, one of the least researched flyways.
how do you…focus your resources to be able to capture that moment prior to an outbreak starting?” The research the Avian Zoonotic Disease Network will undertake is interdisciplinary in nature, and will include scientists with expertise in bioinformatics, veterinary virology and epidemiology, to name a few specialties. For Fair, these types of collaborations have become a passion. “Once any agency stops funding something, what’s left are the people and the relationships,” she says. And those long-term relationships benefit both long-term scientific inquiry and fast-moving crises. An example of the former dates back 25 years, when Fair first set up a network of 400 nestboxes across the Pajarito Plateau in order to study wild bird populations. That project, which has also become a collaborative effort, reflects a common thread throughout all of Fair’s work, which is “trying to understand how environmental stress[ors] impact avian populations and individuals and how does that make them more susceptible or not to infectious diseases.” Those multiple stressors also played a role in the mass bird mortality event in September 2020, when an estimated 1 million birds died in New Mexico
and southern Colorado as a result of drought, wildfire smoke and weather extremes. Fair notes in an essay she wrote in February that the mass bird mortality event led to the creation of a Southwest Avian Health Network to connect New Mexico ornithologists with those in neighboring states. But the long-term collaborative efforts also benefit scientists when, for With many different strains of bird example, an outbreak comes along. “A flu “circulating the world,” Fair says, favorite quote is ‘If you wait until the scientists’ first order of business is “unfirst day of an outbreak to exchange derstanding how those [viruses] are ciryour business cards, the pathogen has culating in both wild populations and already won,’” Fair says. (I think this sometimes the poultry populations” may now be one of my favorite quotes and then why they are killing birds, as well.) which normally are resilient to avian “Having all of these connections and influenza. The next “concern is when relationships ready and that trust esit moves to humans…so it’s made that tablished makes us so much more comleap, that species leap.” And then, of petent and effective in dealing with an course, the fourth stage emerges if the outbreak quickly,” she adds. virus becomes transmissible between Still, the COVID-19 pandemic repeople. (Presumably, this is all sounding quired a singular focus. familiar.) “We went from having hundreds of “Those are the four stages where we different pathogens that we deal with try to understand why it moves between around the world to the world really those stages, and we also try to do surfocusing on one virus,” Fair says. “And veillance to try to capture that moment it was important to not lose sight of the if we can,” Fair says. fact that all these other pathogens—tuHer interest lies in understanding berculosis and HIV and the list goes on the system as a whole, an international and on—are still out there as well. So, public health paradigm known as “One now it’s about taking our focus off of Health,” which examines the interconcoronavirus, at least a little nectivity between animals, bit, to focus on: Did we lose humans, the environment any traction on these other and the pathogens that cause pathogens and can we make diseases. that up? And can we take “Any disease, whether it’s what we learned in the last a coronavirus or Lyme dis20 months and now apply it ease, has its own host pathowith fresh eyes to these other gen environment,” Fair says. systems?” “Any of these disease systems Given that the last year has humans and agricultural or so has included an interanimals and wildlife and the national pandemic, a mass environment, and it’s the inbird mortality event and interaction between those four creasingly extreme weather, groups that leads to an outI wondered if Fair might be break.” For instance, although able to provide some scientifSARS-CoV-2’s origins remain ic reassurance that we aren’t disputed, one likely explanafacing the end of days. (I may tion is it originated in a bat, or may not have phrased my then spread to another aniquestion more scientifically.) mal, which came into human “That’s exactly why I do contact at a live animal, or this work,” she says, “because “wet” market. the more prepared we are, Understanding those inthe more we keep it at a small teractions, studying them “at outbreak and better underthe system level,” means scistand mitigations and underentists are better prepared to stand how to separate your focus their bio-surveillance wildlife-human interface, the efforts: detecting, diagnosbetter we understand these ing and reporting pathogens. systems, the more we can Bio-surveillance, Fair says, is Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Jeanne Fair has spent focus our bio-surveillance costly, whether it’s for humans the last 25 years studying zoonotic diseases and is part of a new efforts, the more we are planor wildlife, and “there [will] Avian Zoonotic Disease Network. ning our future better.” never be enough resources, so COURTESY OF LANL
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