Concerns over the possible spread of bird flu have risen following reports that the father of an 11-year-old girl in Cambodia who died this week after contracting the deadly disease, has tested positive for the virus.
The father has not displayed any major symptoms, health authorities say. It is not yet known whether he caught the virus from his daughter or from the family’s domestic poultry.
Health officials fear that bird flu (more formally known as avian influenza) may be poised to jump the species barrier and spread among humans, as sometimes happens.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) reminds people: “Influenza pandemics have killed, and will again kill, millions of people.”
The transmission last month of lethal bird flu among animals at a large mink farm in Spain has heightened concern among epidemiologists that the virus may evolve to spread rapidly between humans, potentially triggering a pandemic far more lethal than Covid.
“This is incredibly concerning,” Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, commented after the mink farm outbreak.
“This is a clear mechanism for an H5 [avian influenza] pandemic to start.”
WHO advises: “In 2003, A(H5N1) or so-called Avian Influenza, highlighted how a novel virus could pass from animals to humans putting the world on high alert.
“The 2009 A(H1N1) pandemic spread to over 214 countries and territories or communities, resulting in tens of millions of cases and an estimated 151,700 to 575,400 deaths in just the first year.
“Covid-19 has been a stark reminder of the dangers of viral pandemics.”
WHO continues: “Influenza pandemics have killed, and will again kill, millions of people. It’s estimated that the Influenza pandemic of 1918 infected one-third of the Earth’s population and led to between 20 and 40 million deaths before it subsided in 1920.
“One million people around the world died in a 1957 influenza outbreak and another 1 to 3 million lives were lost to the same disease in 1968.
“The world must be vigilant for influenza viruses with pandemic potential: they can emerge at any moment. WHO, countries, and other stakeholders will continue to prepare for influenza epidemics and pandemics through the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework.”
Reporting on the latest incident in Cambodia, the New Scientist stated on Friday: “Mass production of a bird flu vaccine cannot begin because we don’t yet know which variant, if any, could make the jump to start freely spreading between people.”
The 1918 “Spanish flu” influenza epidemic was the world’s deadliest pandemic since the Black Death, the dreaded medieval plague that killed between 75 and 200 million people, equal to 30% to 50% of the entire population of Europe at the time.
In comparison, Spanish flu, caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin, is thought to have killed somewhere between 20 to 50 million people worldwide. Some estimates put the total closer to double those figures.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths worldwide from the Covid pandemic is approaching 7 million.
Written by: Peter Needham
