Bird flu outbreaks mapped as experts warn virus could cause ‘new pandemic’

Bird flu is sweeping across the US with more than 1,000 outbreaks reported to date. But most Americans have nothing to fear – at least not yet.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the risk to the general public is “low” but it is “watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposures”.

Since 2022, there have been four reported human cases. The most recent three – all this year – following exposure to infected dairy cows. The virus doesn’t spread easily among humans.

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But public health officials fear that could change. Just recently former CDC director Dr Robert Redfield told NewsNation: “I really do think it’s very likely that we will, at some time. It’s not a question of if. It’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic.”

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Dr Jennifer B Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, warned in the New York Times that the virus “could mutate to gain the ability to infect people more easily” and could “likely cause a new pandemic”.

With the disease proving fatal in around half of the nearly 900 people known to have contracted the H5N1 strain of the virus worldwide since 2003, bird flu is “typically more dangerous than the viruses that cause seasonal flu and Covid-19”.

Meanwhile, outbreaks of H5N1 have been detected in 525 counties and 48 states. The CDC says almost 97 million birds have been affected since January 2022 when the first H5 viruses to be found in the US since 2016 were detected.

The virus has also spread to 92 dairy cow herds in 12 US states. Avian influenza – commonly known as bird flu – is a highly contagious viral disease affecting the respiratory, digestive and sometimes nervous system in many species of birds.

There are different strains of the virus, but most don’t infect humans. The H5N1 strain of the virus detected in American poultry and dairy herds has caused concern because it can – in rare cases – be transmitted to humans.

According to the World Health Organisation, there have been 889 cases and 463 deaths worldwide caused by the H5N1 virus since 2003. Recently concerns have also been raised about the H5N2 strain of bird flu, after the death of a 59-year-old Mexican man. WHO confirmed this was the first recorded human death from this strain of the virus.

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The WHO said: “Since the virus has not acquired mutations that facilitate transmission among humans and based on available information, WHO assesses the public health risk to the general population posed by this virus to be low and for occupationally exposed persons the risk of infection is considered low-to-moderate.

“Due to the constantly evolving nature of influenza viruses, WHO continues to stress the importance of global surveillance to detect and monitor virological, epidemiological and clinical changes associated with emerging or circulating influenza viruses that may affect human (or animal) health and timely virus sharing for risk assessment.”