Avian flu, threat of a future pandemic? Vigilance is more important than ever, American experts say, given signs of mutation of the virus as it spreads among dairy cows and infects humans in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 58 people have tested positive for bird flu in the country this year.
At this stage, there is nothing to say that this disease will one day be transmitted between humans, and American health authorities continue to consider the risk to the health of the general population to be low. But several elements suggest that “bird flu is knocking on our door and could trigger a new pandemic”Meg Schaeffer, epidemiologist at the American SAS institute, told AFP.
Several obstacles still prevent the H5N1 virus from spreading easily between humans, including the need to mutate to more effectively infect the lungs. But, according to research published Thursday in the journal Sciencethe version of avian flu infecting American cows is just one mutation away from spreading more easily among humans. For virologist Ed Hutchinson of the Scottish University of Glasgow, this suggests that the H5N1 virus is only “a single step” to become “more dangerous for us”.
Avian influenza A (H5N1) appeared in 1996 in China, but since 2020, the number of outbreaks in birds has jumped, a growing number of mammal species have been affected as well as regions of the world previously spared , like Antarctica. Mammals that ate infected dead birds, such as seals, also began to die en masse. New development in March: cases of avian flu in several herds of dairy cows in the United States.
However, the more the virus is able to infect different animals and species, “the more likely it is that it will adapt to better infect humans”warned Meg Schaeffer. And if a bird flu pandemic were to break out, it would be “extremely serious” in humans, due to lack of acquired immunity, according to her.
Calling to “prepare for the possibility of a bird flu pandemic”Maria Van Kerkhove, who heads the WHO's Epidemic and Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness department, judged at the end of November that “we’re not there yet” more than “We must be extra vigilant.”
To avoid the worst scenario, several health experts have called for strengthening, particularly in the United States, controls, protective equipment for workers who may be exposed, but also the sharing of information.
