Health experts have been sounding the alarm on the potential pandemic threat posed by bird flu, which has been showing signs of mutating as it spreads among cows and infects people in the United States, although there is no guarantee that bird flu will ever begin transmitting between humans and health authorities in the US say that the risk to the general public remains low.
The deadly bird flu variant H5N1 first emerged in China in 1996, but over the last four years it has spread more widely than before, even reaching previously untouched regions such as Antarctica. More than 300 million poultry birds have been killed or culled since October 2021, while 315 different species of wild birds died across 79 counties, according to the World Organization for Animal Health.
Mammals that ate infected birds, such as seals, have also experienced mass die offs. And then in March, the virus began spreading among dairy cows in the United States.
More worrying, 58 people have tested positive for bird flu in the US this year, including two who had no known exposure to infected animals, according to its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There are also fears that some human cases are going undetected, as researchers found that 8 out of 115 dairy workers tested in Michigan and Colorado had antibodies for bird flu, suggesting an infection rate of 7 percent.
There are fears that avian flu could start a new pandemic, since the version of bird flu infecting US cows could be a single mutation away from being able to spread more effectively among humans. And if a bird flu pandemic were to break out, it would be “remarkably severe” in humans as we have no built up immunity, according to epidemiologist Meg Schaeffer from the US-based SAS Institute.
For now, it would seem that worries of a bird flu outbreak among humans remains a concern only in the United States, but public health officials of countries like the Philippines should be paying keen attention to any developments, while at the same time buttressing potential responses that could be immediately deployed in case the worst case scenario occurs.
When it comes to the potential of outbreaks and pandemics, it is always better to be safe than sorry. Bird flu might be a fringe concern for now, but it is something that our public health officials simply cannot afford to ignore. Hopefully they are already taking action so we never have to worry about such things.*
