2024-04-18 10:45:12
The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed “tremendous concern” on Thursday over the increasing spread of the H5N1 strain of avian flu to new species, including humans.
• Read also: Avian flu: person infected by dairy cow in the United States
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“It remains, I think, a huge concern,” Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the U.N. health agency, said at a news briefing in Geneva.
The fear is that the H5N1 virus, which in people infected through contact with infected animals has demonstrated “an extraordinarily high mortality rate,” will adapt to become capable of human-to-human transmission.
There is currently no evidence of human-to-human transmission of H5N1.
Between the start of 2023 and April 1, 2024, the WHO said it recorded a total of 889 human cases of avian flu in 23 countries, including 463 deaths, bringing the case fatality rate to 52%.
Beyond monitoring humans infected by animals – cows in a recent case observed in the United States – “it is even more important to understand how many human infections occur without your knowledge, because it is “there will be an adaptation” of the virus, explained Jeremy Farrar.
“It’s tragic to say, but if I am infected with H5N1 and I die, it’s over (the chain of transmission is broken, editor’s note). If I go around the community and pass it on to someone else, then you start the cycle,” he explained.
He believes that infection surveillance and detection systems “are never sufficient” but notes “that this is happening in the richest country in the world” where serological studies have been launched “to see if transmission between breeders of cows and others occurs”.
At the beginning of April, American authorities indicated that a person had tested positive for avian flu after being infected by a dairy cow in Texas.
Currently, cases of transmission to humans are very rare.
A nine-year-old child carrying the H5N1 strain died of bird flu in Cambodia in February, after three deaths in the same country in 2023.
In the United States, the patient showed “redness of the eyes (corresponding to conjunctivitis) as the only symptom,” authorities said, adding that he was isolated and treated with an antiviral drug used for influenza.
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