Major vaccine companies are preparing avian flu vaccines if the H5N1 virus that has killed millions of animals mutates to infect humans.
Vaccine makers GSK, Moderna, and CSL Seqirus have begun developing new human shots to target the rapidly spreading strain of the virus. Others such as Sanofi have vaccines for H5N1 virus in stock that could serve as a base for producing shots tailored to the currently circulating strain.
Epidemiologists maintain that the risk to humans is low, but the specter of another pandemic upending hundreds of millions of lives worldwide has kicked scientific investigation into high gear.
The strain currently tearing through bird populations – H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b – has not evolved to infect humans, but it has started spreading at an unprecedented rate in mammals after causing record deaths in birds – raising the prospect of the stain acquiring dangerous mutations.
An 11-year-old Cambodian girl made headlines recently when she became the first human to die of bird flu this year.
But Cambodian scientists who sequenced the genomic makeup of the virus have confirmed that the clade that killed her – 2.3.2.1c – is not the one causing mass deaths in wild and domestic birds globally.
Still, the virus’ proven ability to mutate quickly and jump from birds to mammals has begun to worry experts. There have been fewer than 1,000 cases in people, but it has killed roughly 53 percent of the people diagnosed with the disease.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus warned last month: ‘Since H5N1 first emerged in 1996 we have only seen rare and non-sustained transmission of H5N1 to and between humans, but we cannot assume that will remain the case and we must prepare for any change in the status quo.’
The current avian flu outbreak has infected or killed more than 200million birds worldwide and thousands of mammals, including minks in Spain, seals in the US, sea lions in South America, and dolphins in the UK.
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