A strain now circulating in dairy cows appears to carry little risk for humans at present, but we need to develop an effective strategy before it mutates
As usual, I’m back with cheery topics to get us through the dark, cold winter months. No, I’m not talking about the studies on how dark chocolate reduces your risk of type 2 diabetes or why eating cake for breakfast isn’t as bad as we think it is. Instead, in the global health world, the main news is about avian flu, the H5N1 virus, and also the deadly outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of a mystery illness. It’s in these moments that I wonder why I didn’t choose a career in baking.
But trying to replicate a Mary Berry recipe would require eggs – and the United States is facing a shortage of eggs – like Britain did last year – with the main culprit being avian flu, which has either killed off or triggered the culling of hundreds of thousands of chickens. Avian flu has caused concerns recently given several step-changes in the seriousness of the potential threat: becoming endemic in wild bird populations; then its spread among domestic birds, causing a turkey lockdown in winter 2022; then reports from across the world about infections in mammals such as sea lions that feed on or live near wild birds. In the past year, a big shift has been the confirmation of mammal-to-mammal transmission among dairy cows in the US.
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
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