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The US must strengthen measures to control the country’s bird flu outbreak and curb 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 among farm animals as the H5N1 pathogen continues to infect cattle and chickens across the country.
The epidemic is an early test for President Donald Trump’s administration, which is already scaling back commitments for global disease control and prevention efforts.
“It is demonstrably grossly irresponsible for US authorities to allow such sustained high levels of virus transmission in dairy cattle, as this poses such a major threat to global human health,” said Professor James Wood, an infectious diseases expert at the Cambridge University area.
He added that curbs such as stricter livestock movement would “vastly reduce human exposure and would be expected in any other country”.
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Experts have watched with growing alarm as H5N1 has been circulating in the US for more than nine months. The outbreak has resulted in 67 confirmed human cases, mostly in people who work with livestock and chickens, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The first fatality was reported this month, although no cases of human-to-human transmission have yet been documented.
Virologists fear a shuffling 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.
According to the CDC, there were an estimated 12mn-22mn human flu cases between October 1 and January 11. On January 16, it urged hospitals to analyze within 24 hours whether flu patients had actually contracted bird flu, especially if patients were in intensive care. The CDC said in November that it had provided human flu vaccines to farm workers in 12 states.
It considered the risk to the public from H5N1 to be low, but added that it was “closely monitoring this dynamic situation”.
The World Organization for Animal Health, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization have said governments should step up several measures to combat the spread of bird flu. These include strengthening virus testing, sequencing and data sharing, improving farm biosecurity and protecting people exposed to infected animals, said Maria van Kerkhove, a top official.
“More can and must be done to reduce the spread of avian influenza in animals, between different species and people,” said Van Kerkhove, acting director of pandemic preparedness.
The WHO also encouraged pharmaceutical companies to develop more animal vaccines that could be widely used to reduce the spread of bird flu, Van Kerkhove added.
The three leading makers of 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 deal with the U.S. government with obligations to prepare to distribute doses quickly and maintain supply levels.
The US government on January 17 gave $590 million to Moderna, which is developing a flu vaccine using similar RNA-based technology to its Covid jab.
The seqirus jab has been ordered by many European governments, but Finland is the only one that has confirmed it is using the vaccines to inoculate farm workers. The vaccine maker said the Alcondium country was also conducting its own independent study into the safety and efficacy of the Jab.
The U.S. response to bird flu has been further complicated by a “brief pause” placed on “mass communications and public appearances not directly related to emergencies or critical to the maintenance of health” by the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies .
The Trump administration initiated the pause to “establish 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 health and human services secretary, is a long-time vaccine skeptic.
One of Trump’s first actions after his inauguration was to activate the year-long process to pull the US out of the WHO. He took the same action in 2020 during his previous term, but President Joe Biden reversed the decision on his incumbency in January 2021.
Data visualization by Bob Haslett
