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The US must strengthen measures to control the country’s bird flu outbreak and counter the growing risk that the virus will evolve to spread more easily between people, international health experts have warned.
Scientists have called for increased vaccination of farm workers and more efforts to stop the spread of the H5N1 pathogen among livestock continues to infect Livestock and chickens throughout the country.
The outbreak is an early test for President Donald Trump’s administration, which it already is Scaling of obligations to global disease control and prevention efforts.
“It is probably grossly irresponsible for US authorities to allow such a sustained high level of virus transmission in dairy cattle, as it poses such a major threat to global human health,” said Professor James Wood, an infectious disease expert at Britain’s University of Cambridge.
He added that curbs such as stricter cattle movements “will greatly reduce human exposure and would be expected in every other country”.
Experts have watched with growing alarm as H5N1 has been circulating in the US for more than nine months. The outbreak resulted 67 confirmed human casesmostly in people who work with livestock and chickens, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
AND First mortality It was recorded this month, although no cases of human-to-human transmission have yet been documented.
Virologists fear the repurposing of genetic material from the H5N1 pathogen with another animal or human flu, creating a new virus that is more likely to be transmitted between humans. The possibility of this scenario increases as H5N1 circulates in the US during the winter flu season.
It was estimated at 12 million-22 million human flu Between October 1 and January 11, according to the CDC. On January 16, he called on hospitals to analyze within 24 hours Flu cocks actually contracted bird fluespecially if the patients were in intensive care. The CDC said in November that it provided human influenza vaccine agricultural workers in 12 countries.
He considered the risk of H5N1 to the public to be low, but added that he was “closely monitoring this dynamic situation.”
The World Organization for Animal Health, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization said governments should step up several measures to combat the spread of bird flu. They include strengthening virus testing, sequencing and data sharing, improving farm biosecurity and protecting people who have been exposed to infected animals, said Maria Van Kerkhove, a top WHO official.
“More can and should be done to reduce the spread of bird flu in animals, between different animal species and between humans,” said Van Kerkhove, who is acting director of Pandemic Revidents.
The WHO has also encouraged pharmaceutical companies to develop more animal vaccines that can be widely used to reduce the spread of bird flu, Van Kerkhove added.
Three leading manufacturers bird flu vaccines For humans – CSL Seqirus, Sanofi and GSK – are well placed to respond if the outbreak becomes a pandemic. In October, the trio signed a $72 million agreement with the U.S. government that included commitments to prepare for the rapid distribution of doses and maintain supply levels.
On Jan. 17, the U.S. government gave $590 million to Moder, which is developing a flu vaccine using similar messenger RNA-based technology to its Coid Jab.
Seqirus Jab has been ordered by many European governments, but Finland is the only one that has confirmed it is using the vaccine to inoculate agricultural workers. The vaccine maker said the Nordic country is also conducting its own independent study on the safety and effectiveness of JAB.
The U.S. response to bird flu has been further complicated by a “short pause” placed on “mass communications and public events not directly related to emergencies or critical to public health” by the Department of Health and Human Services and other authorities.
The Trump administration initiated the pause to “set a process for review and prioritization,” the Health Department said.
Trump and his allies are critical of fundamental aspects of international disease control, while Robert F Kennedy Jr, his nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, is a longtime skeptic.
One of Trump’s first acts after his inauguration was to launch a multi-year process to withdraw the US from the WHO. He took the same action in 2020 during his previous term, but President Joe Biden reversed the decision to take office in January 2021.
Data Visualization by Bob Haslett
