Dr. Jeremy Farrar, Chief Scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), said the avian flu virus — also known as H5N1 — has an “extremely high” mortality rate among the hundreds of people known to have been infected with the virus to date.
Now, No person-to-person transmission of H5N1 has been documented.
“H5N1 is an influenza infection that primarily started in poultry and ducks and has spread dramatically over the past year or two and become a global zoonotic pandemic,” he said. .
“The biggest concern, of course, is that when it does that and infects ducks and chickens – but now more and more mammals – that virus has now evolved and developed the ability to infect human. And what is important is the ability to transmit from person to person.”
Cattle mystery
Commenting on the ongoing H5N1 virus outbreak in dairy cows in the US, senior WHO official calling for increased monitoring and strict investigation by public health authorities, “because it can progress to transmission in many different ways.”
Cows graze near an oil rig in Texas, USA.
He added: “Does the cow’s milking structure create aerosols? Is that the environment they live in? Is the transportation system spreading across the country? This is a huge concern and I think we have to…make sure that If H5N1 is transmitted from person to person, we can respond immediately with equitable access to vaccines, treatments and diagnostics..”
The equivalent of the next pandemic
The development comes as WHO published updated language for describing airborne pathogens, aimed at strengthening international cooperation in the event of a new – and anticipated – global pandemic.
This initiative was originally initiated by COVID-19 emergency and the acknowledgment that there is one lack of commonly agreed terms between doctors and scientists to describe how the coronavirus is transmitted, which adds to the challenge of overcoming it, Dr. Farrar explained.
Global appeal
To combat this, WHO undertook consultations with four major public health agencies from Africa, China, Europe and the United States, before announcing the agreement on a number of newly agreed provisions. . These include “infectious respiratory particles” or “IRPs”, which should be used instead of “aerosols” and “droplets”, to avoid any confusion about the size of the particles involved.
In addition to the new terminology, the initiative reinforces the international community’s commitment to addressing “increasingly complex and frequent epidemics and pandemics,” Dr. Farrar told journalists in Geneva. .
“This is an extremely important first step. But next, we need to keep the principles together, experts together.
“We are using the same terminology, the same language and now we need scientific research to provide evidence about tuberculosis, about Covid and other respiratory pathogens, so we know how control those infections better than we have done in the past.”
Regarding the potential public health risk of HN51, the WHO Chief Scientist warned that Vaccine development is not “where we need to be”. He noted that regional offices, country offices and public health agencies worldwide also lack the ability to diagnose H5N1.
