While no cases of human-to-human transmission have been recorded in the current H5N1 avian outbreak, scientists are concerned about its transmission speed in mammals and whether this might result in a mutated pathogen that can infect people more easily.
“H5N1 is (an) influenza infection, predominantly started in poultry and ducks and has spread effectively over the course of the last one or two years to become a global zoonotic – animal – pandemic,” said Dr Jeremy Farrar, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Chief Scientist.
“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,” Farrar told a media briefing in Geneva last week.
At the WHO’s global media briefing on Wednesday, WHO epidemiologist Dr Maria Van Kerkhove that “we have not seen human-to-human transmission in the recent cases, and I think that’s really important because there’s a lot of news right now on influenza”.