Mutant bird flu more infectious than Covid poses ‘high’ risk of transmission between humans, Russia warns
Russia has warned today that mutating H5N8 Bird Flu has a high risk of human-to-human transmission.
The alert appears to contradict the low threat position of the World Health Organisation.
This comes almost a month after scientists detected the first case of H5N8 transmission to humans at a poultry farm in southern Russia.
The Kremlin’s health watchdog chief Anna Popova said there was “a rather high probability” of transmission between humans.
“It is likely to happen,” she told TASS.
“Colleagues say that the mutation is continuing very actively.”
But she said that scientists had spotted the threat “before a disaster happened”.
Popova spoke after a report from popular Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP) warning of the threat of a “second Wuhan - or even worse”.
Scientists at Russia’s Porton Down - Vector State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology, once a Cold War biological warfare research plant in Siberia - are working on a vaccine, she said.
“The fact is that the virulence of the H5N8 bird flu is much higher than that of COVID-19,” said the KP report.
"In birds, this virus causes 100 percent mortality, and in humans, mortality could be as high as 50 percent.”
Earlier WHO had said the threat from H5N8 appeared low.
Seven people in Russia were found to be infected with H5N8, but all were asymptomatic after the outbreak on a poultry farm in Russia’s Astrakhan region.
Popova said: “Itis a case of a world-level discovery made by Russian scientists at Vector who were able to see this transfer for the first time …before this virus became particularly pathogenic for humans, before human-to-human transmission started.”
She insisted: "We have time to prepare, time to get test systems ready, to develop a vaccine and to monitor the situation.
“It will be a happy outcome if it is not needed later.
“But if it is needed, we will be prepared.
Writer warns of 'plague' if viruses mutate
An expert has warned the world is at risk of a pandemic worse than Covid and "on the sale of the Black Death".
Deadly microbes which have jumped from animals into humans could "kill tens of millions of people", environmental writer John Vidal says.
He says that governments must face up to "the nightmare scenario" of new diseases - or a new, more lethal strain of an older one - emerging "which is as contagious as measles, and as deadly as Ebola".
And Delia Grace Randolph, co-leader of animal and human health at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, said a new wave of diseases spread between animals and people could be especially deadly.
She said the worst is "possibly yet to come".
Ecologists at University College London report that, since 1940, 335 new and potentially fatal diseases have emerged globally.
More than 200 are zoonoses - viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi and prions which occur naturally in wild and domesticated animals but are jumping species to hit humans.
“That is, we were able to see and warn the world community that there is a threat, not when it actually happened.”
She stressed: "We saw what can change and change with extremely grave consequences for humankind and warned about it on time.
“It is a big scientific achievement and an achievement of the entire system because it was necessary to monitor closely, which is what we did at Vector.”
Vector is behind a second Russian vaccine for Covid-19 called EpiVacCorona, soon to be mass produced.
Vladimir Putin’s prime minister Mikhail Mishustin visited Vector this week with Popova, and was given a "chilling" warning about the threat from the Bird Flu strain.
He told scientists: “Of course, there's nothing good about witnessing the appearance of new viruses.
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“But the work done by our scientists and doctors aims to create the relevant tools to fight them.”
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Health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said: "Bird flu is an acute infectious disease of birds transmitted to humans.”
It is “characterised by acute febrile syndrome, lung damage and high mortality” and “affects the brain, liver, kidneys and other organs.”