THE world could be on the brink of a “disastrous” bird flu outbreak, a top epidemiologist has warned. This month, a teenager in Canada tested positive for a mutated version of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus that may be more transmissible to humans. “This is what happens just before we have major pandemics,” Prof Chris Dye from Oxford University told Sun Health.
“Sometimes it fizzles out, but sometimes it explodes because pathogens find unexpected ways to survive and spread.” The teenager, Canada’s first presumed human case of H5N1, was previously healthy with no underlying conditions. They developed symptoms on November 2 and were admitted to intensive care in British Columbia on November 8.
Read more on bird flu While the patient is believed to have had no contact with farms, they were exposed to dogs, cats, and reptiles. The authorities suspect the virus is H5N1, a strain that has infected 903 people and killed at least 465 since 2003. The virus was detected in the UK for the first time this year at a commercial poultry farm in Cornwall earlier this week.
The strain has also spread widely among US cattle , which has increasingly been spilling into humans. Most read in Health There have so far been 53 human cases - mostly among dairy workers - and has even been detected in milk. Prof Chris called this a “very dangerous development,” adding, “it keeps changing how it behaves and getting closer to people”.
The sheer scale of the current outbreak, which .