United States: This winter, the big news in global health is about avian flu (H5N1) and a deadly mystery illness in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While studies show that dark chocolate might help with diabetes and cake for breakfast isn’t so bad, these serious health issues are what we’re really focusing on right now. It makes me wonder why I didn’t choose a career in baking!
But, attempting a Mary Berry recipe, one needs eggs – and, hey presto, the United States is lacking them – like Britain did last year – thanks to avian flu which either has killed or forced the removal of hundreds of thousands of chickens.
As reported by the Guardian.com, avian flu has caused concerns recently given several step-changes in the seriousness of the potential threat: ; making it a steady feature in wild bird population; and then covering domestic birds, leading to a turkey shutdown during winter of 2022; infections in sea lions reported around the world that feeds or resides near wild birds.
Among the new developments in the last one-year, change has been the documentation of direct transmission from a mammal to another especially among dairy cows in the US.
More cases of the virus existence have led to more bird-to-human or cow-to-human transmission in the past year, but the H5N1 virus cannot spread between humans and as such is not the same as Sars-Cov-2 or seasonal flu and therefore classified as low risk.
A Science article published recently said that the strain in cows would need just one mutation to allow the flu to jump from birds to humans.
This was the change that would cause governments to enact their pandemic contingency and reaction plans and would catapult leap into the stratosphere of risk management indices.
However, there are even more questions if one looks at H5N1. Before this year, the mortality was believed to be around 50%, and it is still fatal for many kinds of birds and cats. However, of the 57 confirmed infections in the past year in the US, all were mild and no one was hospitalized.