Bird Flu Could Mutate Into Pandemic Worse Than COVID, Warns Leading French Scientist
PARIS, Nov 27 (Reuters) – The bird flu virus, which spreads among wild birds, poultry and mammals, could cause an epidemic worse than Covid-19 if it mutates to transmit between humans, the head of the center for respiratory infections at the Pasteur Institute in France said.
Highly pathogenic bird flu, commonly referred to as bird flu, has led to the culling of hundreds of millions of birds over the past few years, disrupting food supplies and causing prices to rise; however, human infections remain rare.
“What we fear is that the virus will adapt to mammals and especially humans, become capable of human-to-human transmission, and this virus will become a pandemic virus,” Marie-Anne Rameix-Welti, medical director of the Pasteur Institute’s center for respiratory infections, told Reuters.
The Pasteur Institute was among the first European laboratories to develop and share COVID-19 detection tests and made the protocols available to the World Health Organization and laboratories worldwide.
NO ANTIBODIES AGAINST H5 BIRD FLU
People have antibodies against the common H1 and H3 seasonal flu, but they do not have antibodies against the H5 bird flu, which affects birds and mammals, just as they do not have antibodies against COVID-19.
Rameix-Welti said that unlike Covid-19, which mainly affects vulnerable people, flu viruses can also kill healthy individuals, including children.
“The bird flu epidemic will probably be quite severe, potentially even more severe than the epidemic we have experienced,” he said from his laboratory in Paris.
In the past, there have been numerous cases of humans infected with H5 avian influenza viruses, including H5N1, circulating among poultry and dairy cows in the United States, but they were usually in close contact with infected animals.
This month, the first human case of H5N5 emerged in the US state of Washington. The man, who had underlying conditions, died last week.
The World Health Organization, in its latest report on bird flu, said there were nearly 1,000 outbreaks in humans between 2003 and 2025, with 48 percent of deaths occurring mainly in Egypt, Indonesia and Vietnam.
THE RISK OF HUMAN PANDEMIC IS STILL LOW
But the risk of an outbreak in humans remains low, Gregorio Torres, head of the World Organization for Animal Health’s Department of Science, told Reuters.
“We need to be prepared to intervene early enough. But for now, you can happily walk in the woods, eat chicken and eggs and enjoy life. The risk of a pandemic is a possibility. But in terms of probability, it is still very low,” he said.
Rameix-Welti also said that if bird flu mutates and spreads between people, the world will be better prepared than before the Covid-19 outbreak.
“The positive thing about flu compared to COVID is that we have certain preventive measures. We have vaccine candidates ready and we know how to produce the vaccine quickly,” he said.
“We also have stocks of specific antivirals that could, in principle, be effective against this bird flu virus,” he added.
