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Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Is Devastating Birds, and Humans May Be Next - The Daily Beast

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Is Devastating Birds, and Humans May Be Next - The Daily Beast

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Is Devastating Birds, and Humans May Be Next - The Daily Beast
Mar 15, 2023 1 min, 0 secs

The U.S. reported its first human case of HPAI last April, in a person who was involved in culling birds at a farm where H5N1 had been confirmed to infect the poultry.

Recent reports that HPAI has infected and killed off thousands of sea lions in South America have concerned researchers that the virus may someday be able to spread between humans or take part in a dangerous melting pot inside a mammalian host.

“We've been thinking a lot lately about this strain because of its potential to be a zoonotic disease” spread from animals to people, Adel Talaat, a microbiology researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told The Daily Beast.

Methods to vaccinate wild bird populations aren’t practical at this point, Talaat said, leading researchers to focus efforts on what they can feasibly control.

Researchers typically think about zoonotic diseases in multiple stages, and a series of mutations in the influenza virus are necessary for the pathogen to spread between humans, not just occasionally spill over from birds.

Relatively few people are directly involved in handling birds, and the U.S. does not have open-air animal markets, which play a key role in starting and spreading zoonotic outbreaks.

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