Global concerns are mounting over bird flu’s potential to mutate into a human-transmissible virus, with the United States grappling with outbreaks in dairy cows, rising human cases, and intensified monitoring efforts.
Internationally, the concerns are not only about the continued spread of bird flu, but about its potential to mutate into a virus that is transmissible to and between human beings.
The concerns have been exacerbated by the spread of bird flu in dairy cows in the United States. This has been followed by an increase in bird flu cases amongst dairy workers.
The H5N1 bird flu has infected more than 860 dairy herds in 16 US states since March 2024, said a Reuters report quoted by the Daily Maverick.
The US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 61 human cases nationally since April, mostly in workers on dairy farms where the virus infected cattle. While most have suffered mild symptoms, one patient has died after contact with backyard flocks and wild birds.
In previous cases of human infection, bird flu has killed nearly half of the people who have caught it. Between 2003 and November 2024, the World Health Organization has recorded 948 cases of confirmed H5N1 influenza, leading to 464 deaths.
The CDC says the current public health risk in the United States is low, but that it is “watching the situation carefully”.
The outbreak has prompted California, a prime milk producing state, to declare a state of emergency over the spread of bird flu. The US department of agriculture has ordered nationwide testing of the country’s milk supplies to “facilitate comprehensive H5N1 surveillance of the nation’s milk supply and dairy herds”.
In addition, the New York Times reports that US government has committed $306 million toward improving hospital preparedness, early stage research on therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines.
Bird flu mutation will be closely monitored throughout 2025.
Image: CDC / Courtesy of Cynthia Goldsmith; Jacqueline Katz; Sherif R. Zaki
