WHO expresses significant concern as bird flu spreads to humans

An official with the World Health Organization said Thursday that human-to-human transmission of bird flu would be an “enormous concern” among an outbreak among dairy cows in the United States.

“This remains I think an enormous concern,” Chief Scientist of the WHO Jeremy Farrar told reporters in Geneva, according to the Guardian.

Bird flu, otherwise known as H5N1, has an “extremely high” mortality rate among humans, Farrar said, and has so far spread from animals to hundreds of people, qualifying it as a “global zoonotic,” or animal, pandemic.

The chief concern, however, according to Farrar, would be human-to-human transmission. The WHO emphasized that no human-to-human transmission of bird flu has occurred as of yet.

“The great concern, of course, is that in doing so and infecting ducks and chickens — but now increasingly mammals — that that virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans. And then critically, the ability to go from human-to-human transmission,” Farrar said.

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The WHO added that vaccine development is not “where we need to be” and that local health authorities do not properly have the ability to diagnose bird flu.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recorded two cases of human bird flu in the U.S. and classifies the current public health risk as “low.”