If the world finds itself amid a flu pandemic in a few months, it won\u2019t be a big surprise. Birds have been spreading a new clade of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, 2.3.4.4b, around the world since 2021. That virus spilled over to cattle in Texas about a year ago and spread to hundreds of farms across the United States since. There have been dozens of human infections in North America. And in some of those cases the virus has shown exactly the kinds of mutations known to make it better suited to infect human cells and replicate in them.<\/p>\n
No clear human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has been documented yet, but \u201cthis feels the closest to an H5 pandemic that I\u2019ve seen,\u201d says Louise Moncla, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania. \u201cIf H5 is ever going to be a pandemic, it\u2019s going to be now,\u201d adds Seema Lakdawala, a flu researcher at Emory University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If the world finds itself amid a flu pandemic in a few months, it won\u2019t be a big surprise. Birds have been spreading a new clade of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, 2.3.4.4b, around the world since 2021. That virus spilled over to cattle in Texas about a year ago and spread to hundreds of farms across the United States since. There have been dozens of human infections in North America. And in some of those cases the virus has shown exactly the kinds of mutations known to make it better suited to infect human cells and replicate in them.<\/p>\n
No clear human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has been documented yet, but \u201cthis feels the closest to an H5 pandemic that I\u2019ve seen,\u201d says Louise Moncla, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania. \u201cIf H5 is ever going to be a pandemic, it\u2019s going to be now,\u201d adds Seema Lakdawala, a flu researcher at Emory University.<\/p>\n