The virus has spread from birds to mammals such as sea lions, foxes and otters. But these cases do not provide evidence that the virus is about to spill over into humans
recorded outbreak of avian influenza is tearing through populations of poultry and wild birds across the world. There are growing fears that it might pose a risk to humans, too. On February 8th Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organisation, warned that the world had to prepare for a possible bird-flu pandemic. How worried should humankind be?, a subtype of the influenza virus, from birds to mammals. In recent weeks Peru has reported the deaths of 585 sea lions from.
is not well adapted to infect the upper respiratory tract of mammals; people tend to contract it only after handling birds. Still, the widening range of species carrying the disease suggests that the threat is increasing. Dr Tedros said that the risk to humans is low, but added that it may not stay that way.
Before covid-19, it was widely believed that the next human pandemic would be caused by an influenza virus. The 1918 influenza pandemic, which is now known to have had genes of avian origin, killed about 50m people. Flu pandemics also occurred in 1957-58, 1968 and 2009. Though avian-flu cases in humans are rare, they can have devastating mortality rates. In 1997, following an outbreak in poultry in Asia, avian flu killed half of the 860 people it infected.
A particular worry would be mammal-to-mammal spread. Experts have not yet confirmed that the sea lions passed the virus between each other, rather than catch it from dead, infected seabirds. Mink-to-mink infections appear to have occurred at the Spanish fur farm, but the animals were culled and mammal-to-mammal transmission seems to be extremely rare.
Such bird-flu vaccines that exist do not inspire a strong immune response. Most are produced using an old method that involves incubating the vaccines in chicken eggs. This takes time. Dr Tedros’s warning should stimulate interest in modernising the manufacture of flu vaccines, as well as in stockpiling antiviral drugs.
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