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the essentials The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed its “tremendous concern” this Thursday about the increasing spread of the H5N1 strain of avian flu to new species, including humans.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is alerting the international community to the dangers posed by the latest H5N1 strain of Avian Flu. The increasing spread of the latter to new species, including humans, is a source of “huge concern”, for Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist of the United Nations health agency, who spoke this Thursday 18 April in Geneva.
Fear that the virus will adapt
The fear is that the H5N1 virus, which in people contaminated by their contact with animals infected has demonstrated “an extraordinarily high mortality rate”, adapting to become capable of human-to-human transmission. Knowing that 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 surveillance of 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 that is where the adaptation” of the virus will occur, explained Jeremy Farrar.
“It’s tragic to say, but if I’m 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 transmit it to someone ‘another, 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 the like happens.”
Cases of transmission to humans are very rare
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 avian flu in Cambodia in February, after three deaths in the same country in 2023. In the United States, the patient had shown “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 the flu.
