H5N1 bird flu is here. It is moving from animals to people invisible ways before It is spreading new species and new places, and this expansion is happening to a large extent under the radar.
Until now 36 human cases They have been reported in six US states: California, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Texas and Washington. These are just cases known to health officials. Not all states they are trying people or animals. Virus testing they are mistakes and scarcely.
Most health officials say they are not yet overly concerned about the H5N1 flu because the virus rarely infects people, compared to the number of affected livestock and poultry. When it does, so far, it usually causes very mild symptoms and so far there is no evidence that it can be passed from person to person. That’s the scary scenario: a new virus that causes serious illness among people that can easily be passed from person to person. We’re not there yet.
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Additionally, the US government is stockpiling H5N1 vaccines. But don’t count on those vaccines to save us if this virus does what it does flu viruses sometimes doand it becomes a pandemic form. It won’t coerce humanity by slowly mutating, allowing people to ramp up vaccines quickly.
“It’s going to happen quickly,” says Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center University of Public Health and a veteran of numerous disease outbreaks, from the flu to Ebola.
The world has just seen it happen. COVID appeared suddenly and spread around the world before the alarm sounded. Even with the new and fast technology of mRNA vaccines, it took time about a year After the start of the global spread of SARS-CoV-2, the first doses to reach the arms. At that point, 300,000 people died Hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—died in the US and around the world before vaccines were fully rolled out.
Somehow we haven’t learned this valuable lesson in early bird flu pandemic preparedness, even though this particular flu virus has been scaring doctors, scientists, and public health experts for a long time. H5N1 is a well-known and well-characterized virus, and in theory a large vaccine bank could be ready if it gains the ability to spread easily from person to person.
But there isn’t. The US currently has fewer than five million vaccines against the H5N1 strain that is circulating in cattle and occasionally infecting people. The federal government has contracts that will supply a supply for 10 million filled syringes, but not until spring 2025. And because two doses will be needed for protection, it is enough to fully vaccinate only five million people. That’s less than 2 percent of the US population—to say nothing of the rest of the world.
And perhaps, after the experience with COVID, the US doesn’t have an mRNA flu vaccine to match a mutating strain that can quickly adapt. Instead, the vaccines that are being stockpiled to protect against pandemic flu strains are mostly made using nearly century-old ones. egg-based technology. It’s a surefire, slow method that would take months to escalate in an emergency. “We think 100 million doses within five months based on current capabilities,” said Robert Johnson, director of the medical countermeasures program at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Strategic Readiness and Strategic Response Administration.
These are the approved and authorized vaccines. New vaccines should complete testing and clear regulatory hurdles. There is currently no public plan to distribute or administer pandemic H5N1 vaccines, although this could change if person-to-person transmission occurs or the virus becomes more virulent.
Vaccine maker Moderna—launched one of the first COVID vaccines with new, lightweight mRNA technology.he says he has H5 influenza virus vaccine in phase 2 trials. He has reached an agreement with the US government. Pfizer, another maker of mRNA vaccines, also says it has an H5 pandemic flu vaccine, but does not yet have an agreement from the US government.
Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is working on an mRNA vaccine to protect against the flu that he hopes would be quick to produce and easy to adapt to match a new pandemic strain. But he and his colleagues had to put that work on hold to deal with COVID, and they’re getting back up to speed.
“If a pandemic happened tomorrow, there’s no doubt we’d see conventional egg-based vaccines and mRNA vaccines spread. So let’s hope there’s no pandemic tomorrow,” says Hensley.
The problems with flu vaccines start with the flu virus itself. It has an exceptional tendency to mutate or, worse, mix with other viruses. This is why flu shots tend to change from season to season and why flu shots do not fully protect against infection.
The H5N1 virus currently infecting cattle is different H5N1 viruses It first appeared in birds in 1997 and early 2000s and spread to Asia, Africa and the Middle East, according to some estimates killing about 50 percent of infected people.
So it makes no sense to make 600 million doses of the H5N1 vaccine just in case the virus now infecting livestock decides to start infecting and killing people. It may change again, or even disappear. “If this H5 does cause a pandemic, it probably won’t be the same as what’s circulating in cattle (today),” Hensley says. It will have to be adapted to infect people.
So government agencies and flu vaccine makers and researchers are walking a fine line, watching the virus and the game, if and when it changes, they’ll notice and can make the right vaccine pretty quickly. “It’s not possible, because the virus is constantly evolving, to have a constant stockpile of vaccines — a large stockpile –,” Johnson said at an Oct. 8 meeting of the Bipartisan Biodefense Committee, a US think tank.
There is a theoretical solution to this problem: the flu vaccine that protects against all strains of influenzahelping the body’s immune system identify parts of the virus they are consistent season to season and strain to strain. “We need a moonshot project for a universal flu vaccine,” says Khan.
A universal vaccine would protect people against seasonal flu as well as new pandemic strains, for example The H1N1 strain came from pigs To match the annual mix of influenza viruses circulating in Mexico in 2009.
Hensley’s team has something close in an mRNA vaccine that confers immunity against all 20 known subtypes of influenza. But the first thing is that this will not be a universal flu vaccine, but the first to give people an initial level of protection. “It would not replace the seasonal vaccine. You’re still stuck with this problem of making booster vaccines,” he says, because his lab shots only target known subtypes. However, this type of vaccine can face the problem of stockpiles. Continuous production would be a waste rather than a one-time effort.
Despite decades of work, no laboratory has been able to develop a vaccine that protects people against the mutations that cause flu subtypes to drift from season to season. And there has been little political impetus for one.
This is in no small part the result of growing public hostility. When COVID broke out, people were open to vaccinations. Then-President Donald Trump he proclaimed the expansion of his government of the vaccine, but it has helped since then skepticism of the feeding vaccine. Not even Trump nor his democratic opponent for the presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris, It refers to preparing for a pandemic on the respective campaign platforms.
As well as getting regular childhood vaccinations it is falling. “The lack of confidence in vaccines puts us in a very bad place. We know people are dying because they’re not getting the COVID vaccine,” Khan says. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the reports Only 11% of adults and 7% of pregnant women have received the latest COVID-19 vaccine.
Some states have release vaccination requirements and recommendationsSomething that worries Khan and other public health experts. Vaccines can’t help anyone if people don’t get them. Politicians who don’t promote the need to prepare for a pandemic will be sure that the next one won’t be in office. “All of this will potentially come home with the next pandemic,” says Khan.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily their own. American scientific
