Alarm bells have been rung by World Health Organisation officials over a human-to-human strain of deadly bird flu with the potential to become a “pandemic” – claiming that it is “expected”.
The WHO's chief scientist Dr Jeremy Farrar was speaking to a UN conference this week when he claimed that the mortality rate among several hundred people thought to have been infected with it in recent months was “extremely high”.
And, he said: “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.
READ MORE: 'I met aliens from another dimension – I went on their ship and they took my eggs'
Click for more of the latest news from across the world from the Daily Star.
“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.”
He went on to explain how it's not just birds that are the issue . . . but also cows. “Do the milking structures of cows create aerosols? Is it the environment which they're living in? Is it the transport system that is spreading this around the country?," he said.
“This is a huge concern and I think 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.”
The expert added that a new global pandemic was “expected” and that education around airborne pathogens are being increased as the last pandemic proved that there was a “lack of commonly agreed terms” among those in the boffin community over how to explain the way in which Coronavirus was transmitted.
And if that wasn't enough to worry about, the WHO Chief Scientist cautioned that vaccine development was not “where we need to be” – nor was it the case that public health officials worldwide would be “capable” of diagnosing H5N1.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.
