WHO chief scientist calls for increased monitoring and preparation for highly pathogenic bird flu

The bird flu spreading through cattle in the United States is an “enormous concern” the chief scientist of the World Health Organization said Thursday as he called for more tracking and preparation for the virus.

The bird flu spreading through cattle in the United States is an “enormous concern” the chief scientist of the World Health Organization said Thursday as he called for more tracking and preparation for the virus. So far, there is no evidence that the highly pathogenic H5N1 flu virus can spread from person to person. This flu strain was first detected in birds in 1996 and has primarily been a threat to farmed and wild fowl, but in the past two years, an increasing number of mammals have tested positive with the virus, indicating that the virus is looking for new hosts and moving closer to people. “The great concern, of course, is that in doing so and infecting ducks and chickens — but now increasingly mammals — that that virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans. And then critically, the ability to go from human-to-human transmission,” Dr. Jeremy Farrar, a British medical researcher and chief scientist at WHO since 2023, told reporters on Thursday in Geneva. “We have to watch, more than watch, we have to make sure that if H5N1 did come across to humans with human-to-human transmission that we were in a position to immediately respond with access equitably to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.” Farrar’s comments came in a response to a question during a news conference about WHO’s new definition for airborne pathogens. Though H5N1 doesn’t spread from person to person, humans can catch it when they’re exposed to infected animals. In the US, one person in Texas has tested positive for H5N1 this year. That person was working with cows when they tested positive, and it is believed they caught it from an infected cow.