Several experts suggest that widespread breakouts throughout the world might encourage viral changes and lead to transmission between humans, resulting in a pandemic.
 |
| Bird Flu in USA and Europe |
Increasingly aggressive, pervasive, and potentially dangerous to people. After the coronavirus, bird flu might become the next epidemic to be conquered. Several experts believe that birds are more likely to infect people and that the dreaded human-to-human transmission is on the horizon. At that time it will no longer be a concern simply for farmers, obliged in recent years to kill over 300 million chickens, ducks and geese, but a worldwide health hazard on a par with Covid.
In Europe, over 50 million birds were killed on farms in the last year due to bird flu.
In the last year, Europe has experienced the most catastrophic and extensive outbreak of avian flu, with many waves and without even the "summer break" that had previously defined the disease's presence primarily in the autumn-winter months. Outbreaks continue unabated in chicken farms and among wild birds, whose migratory patterns have been altered by climate change. Such an increase means that the virus's alterations will soon allow for easier transmission to people, as opposed to the rare examples seen thus far.
"It is feared it has pandemic potential," said Wendy Blay Puryear, a molecular virologist at Tufts University in Massachusetts. underlining how bird disease was at the top of scientists' list of concerns until Covid entered the public scene, drawing all the attention to itself. The scientist, interviewed by the British newspaper Guardian, reiterated that at the moment the virus is considered to be of low risk for humans. However, being able to replicate and evolve rapidly, it cannot be excluded that it will soon be able to infect new species, including humans.
There is already evidence of H5N1 (the most common strain of avian flu) evolving. Since its discovery in China in 1996, when it invaded a geese farm in Guangdong, the virus has infected at least 63 species of wild birds, as well as animals such as bobcats, bears, and seals. A "change artist" is someone who can modify their skin and ambitions throughout time. If scientists and policymakers had previously believed that they could manage the illness by confining it to chicken coops and culling, this illusion is shattering.
"We're facing a new era, because if it's established in wild birds it's a much more complex situation when it comes to figuring out how to control it and predicting where it's going to go next,"spread of the virus in North America .The coming and going of cultivated and wild animals has accelerated and expedited the dissemination, which has covered hitherto unfathomable distances.
The other critical aspect is the food system, which is distinguished by intensive farming and the genetic similarities of most animals. Consider the dominance of Broiler chickens, which are marketed throughout the western region and driven to acquire weight quickly in the best-selling portions such as breasts and thighs. Because of strictly economic reasons, such density and homogeneity have been critical in swiftly spreading the effect of avian flu. For the time being, the only remedy considered by the European Union and promoted by France is vaccination of farmed birds. A concept that has so far sparked scepticism and dissatisfaction among farmers in several nations, but which looks to be the only viable alternative to mass culling.
In recent years, the virus has already revealed itself in males, claiming several victims: 865 affected persons were documented in 21 nations between 2003 and October 2022. 456 of them were killed. According to the data, the virus has a "high fatality rate in persons who become sick," revealed Kuiken. Meanwhile, a new strain known as H3N8 has evolved, affecting a human being for the first time in April 2022: a four-year-old whose family kept chickens in China. The majority of cases of transmission, which are centred in Africa and Asia, are linked to the handling of infected live poultry. However, once a person gets infected, the virus adapts, potentially allowing transmission between humans.
"The risk of this happening is really minimal, but the impact, if it does happen, is quite substantial," noted Thijs Kuiken, professor of comparative pathology at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, which has also conducted multiple Covid-19 trials. As an example, the lecturer offered a 1918 bird flu outbreak that killed 50 million people.
According to specialists, the virus still has to undergo multiple alterations in order to transmit between individuals, but the rate of unpredictability is great. "We never really know with these viruses...but they've been with us for 18 years in various forms and haven't yet acquired that function of being easily transmissible to humans," said Ian Barr, deputy director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center for Reference and Influenza Research in Melbourne. The virus is expected to continue finding this stage challenging, although knowledge on it is limited. However, the scientists argue that in a game of big numbers, the spread of the virus among birds leads to a greater number of illnesses and hence a higher risk of infection.