Max Kozlov in Nature:
Ten months on from the shocking discovery that a virus usually carried by wild birds can readily infect cows, at least 68 people in North America have become ill from the pathogen and one person has died.
Although many of the infections have been mild, emerging data indicate that variants of the avian influenza virus H5N1 that are spreading in North America can cause severe disease and death, especially when passed directly to humans from birds. The virus is also adapting to new hosts — cows and other mammals — raising the risk that it could spark a human pandemic.
“The risk has increased as we’ve gone on — especially in the last couple of months, with the report of [some] severe infections,” says Seema Lakdawala, an influenza virologist at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.
Last week, US President Donald Trump took office and announced that he will pull the United States — where H5N1 is circulating in dairy cows — out of the World Health Organization, the agency that coordinates the global response to health emergencies. This has sounded alarm bells among researchers worried about bird flu.
Here, Nature talks to infectious-disease specialists about what they’re learning about how humans get sick from the virus, and the chances of a bird-flu pandemic.
More here.
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