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The World Health Organization (WHO) raised serious concerns on Thursday regarding the escalating spread of H5N1 bird flu infections across various species, including humans.
“This remains I think an enormous concern,” stated WHO’s chief scientist Jeremy Farrar during a press briefing in Geneva.
With reports of cows and goats now falling victim to the ongoing bird flu outbreak that commenced in 2020, the UN health agency has labeled it as “a global zoonotic animal pandemic.”
Farrar emphasized, “The great concern of course is that in… infecting ducks and chickens and then increasingly mammals, that virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans and then critically the ability to go from human to human.”
While there’s currently no evidence suggesting the transmission of the influenza A(H5N1) virus among humans, the remarkably high mortality rate observed in the hundreds of cases where humans contracted the virus through animal contact is deeply troubling.
Over the past 15 months, WHO has recorded 463 fatalities out of 889 human cases reported across 23 countries, resulting in a distressing mortality rate of 52 percent.
Although the strain of bird flu responsible for decimating millions of wild birds in recent years has been identified in various mammals, including cattle, for the first time, eight US states have reported the highly pathogenic avian influenza in a dairy herd.
As Farrar cautioned, “When you come into the mammalian population, then you’re getting closer to humans,” underscoring that “this virus is just looking for new, novel hosts.”
Meanwhile, a bird flu outbreak has surfaced in two locations within the Alappuzha district of Kerala, India. Authorities confirmed the presence of H5N1 avian influenza in ducks raised in specific areas of Edathva Grama Panchayat and Cheruthana Grama Panchayat. The infection was verified following the testing of duck samples exhibiting bird flu symptoms at a laboratory in Bhopal.
The global health community remains on high alert as efforts continue to contain the spread of H5N1 bird flu and mitigate its potential impact on human health.
