MONDAY, Sept. 9, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- The time is now to prepare for a potential pandemic involving the H5N1 bird flu, says a group of international vaccine and public health experts. Avian influenza vaccines need to developed, stockpiled and even delivered to people at highest risk of contracting the bird flu, the experts argue in an editorial published Sept.
4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association . “At this critical juncture, decisions about vaccine development, stockpiling and deployment will shape our ability to respond to immediate and future pandemic risks,” the researchers wrote. There have been 14 human cases of bird flu in the United States since 2022, four following exposure to dairy cows and 10 following exposure to poultry, according to the U.
S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that a new case had emerged in a patient hospitalized in Missouri who had no known contact with animals.
That case is being throughly investigated, the agency said. Bird flu has also sickened more than 100 million poultry and infected 196 U.S.
diary herds, the CDC says. Outbreaks in poultry have occurred in 48 states, and dairy cows have become infected in 14 states. “It is highly concerning that this H5N1 strain, compared with prior ones, has had unprecedented spread among mammals,” said editorial co-author Dr.
Jesse Goodman , a professor and infectious disease specialist at Georgetown .