WHO expresses ‘great concern’ that avian flu is beginning to spread from person to person
The World Health Organization’s top scientist, Dr Jeremy Farrar, warns of “grave concern” that bird flu could develop and spread from person to person.
H5N1 is an influenza infection that primarily occurs in poultry and ducks. To date, there have been no cases of human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus. The virus has had an “extremely high” mortality rate among the several hundred people known to have been infected by it to date.
Regarding the outbreak of the H5N1 virus among dairy cows in the United States, the WHO chief urged public health authorities to continue careful monitoring and investigation “as it can evolve and be transmitted through multiple routes.”
“Do cow milking structures create aerosols? Is it the environment they live in? Is it a transport system that extends throughout the country? This is a big problem, and I think we need to make sure that if the H5N1 virus spreads from person to person, we are able to respond immediately by providing equal access to vaccines, treatment and diagnostics,” he said.
The news comes as WHO announced updated language to describe airborne pathogens in a bid to increase international cooperation in the event of a new and expected pandemic.
As Dr Farrar explains, the initiative arose as a result of the Covid-19 emergency and the recognition that the lack of agreed upon terms between doctors and scientists to describe how the coronavirus is transmitted has made it difficult to overcome.
To counter this, WHO consulted with the four main public health authorities in Africa, China, Europe and the US before announcing agreement on a set of new consensus terms. These include “infectious respiratory particles” or “IRPs”, which should be used instead of “aerosols” and “droplets” to avoid confusion regarding the size of the particles in question.
In addition to the new terminology, the initiative strengthens the international community’s commitment to combating “increasingly complex and frequent epidemics and pandemics”, Dr Farrar told reporters in Geneva.
“This is a very important first step. But the next step is to bring disciplines and experts together, (because) we use the same terminology, the same language, and now we need to do the science that will provide the evidence on TB. , Covid and other respiratory pathogens so that we know how to control these infections better than before,” he said.
Regarding the possible public health risk posed by HN51, WHO’s chief scientist warned that vaccine development is “not where it needs to be.” “Regional and national offices and public health authorities around the world also lack the ability to diagnose H5N1,” he noted.