British experts have called for work to develop a vaccine against bird flu, to be ready in the event that the virus begins to spread among humans.
Professor Ian Brown, Head of the Department of Virology at the British Animal and Plant Health Agency, said that the rapidly evolving avian influenza virus is spreading increasingly from birds to mammals, which increases the risk to humans.
He added, “Any unexpected outbreak increases the risks involved. We have learned from the experience of Covid-19 that it takes time to prepare for an epidemic, to obtain vaccines and antiviral drugs. We do not have vaccines that immunize humans from avian influenza currently,” according to Sky News. ” British.
He continued, “While there is no evidence so far of a significant spread of the virus among mammals, it must be carefully tracked to monitor the impact of new mutations.”
WHO warning
- WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday that while the current risk to humans from bird flu is low, “we cannot assume that this will remain the case. We must prepare for any change in the status quo.”
- Until recently, the H5N1 virus largely infected poultry and migratory birds.
- Over the past two years, transmission of the virus has been monitored in mammals, including mink in Spain, seals in Peru, and wild foxes and otters in the United Kingdom.
- Professor Martin Beer, head of the Institute for Virus Diagnostics at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute in Germany, considered that “the virus is changing faster than we can describe it.”
- According to the World Health Organization, 868 people have been infected with H5N1 over the past two decades, with 457 deaths, and no documented human-to-human transmission of the virus has been recorded so far.
