How prepared are we for human bird flu?

The UK government has ordered tens of thousands of doses of a bird flu vaccine to boost immunity against the deadly H5N1 virus.

This comes after the European Commission signed a deal for 40 million doses of a bird flu vaccine. Finland has also announced it will be the first country to administer bird flu vaccines to people, with farm workers receiving two jabs from next month.

Although the risk to humans is currently classified as "low" because the virus can only be passed on from affected animals, said the i news site, the move "marks a stepping-up of readiness" for a "possible new pandemic" if the virus makes the "genetic leap" to human-to-human transmission.

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A former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NewsNation that "it's not a question of if, it's a question of when" a bird flu pandemic will break out. And two flu experts warned in the British Medical Journal that "the risk of a major outbreak" is "large, plausible and imminent".

What did the commentators say?

With the Covid pandemic still fresh in our minds, we "must take steps now" to "minimise the number of times we roll the dice on a new pandemic", said Dr Thom Rawson, a maths modeller from Imperial College London, in The Telegraph.

Between 2003 and 2022 there were 868 reported cases of human infection with the "particularly nasty" H5N1 variant, which is currently sweeping through the US dairy industry. The "alarming" 53% human mortality rate shows that "something needs to be done", but "exactly what isn't so simple".

"In an ideal world," Dr Jayna Raghwani, a biologist from the UK's Royal Veterinary College, told the BBC, there would be more surveillance for the virus close to farms.

We could "do more general monitoring of wildlife close to places we know outbreaks are occurring and more in domestic animals," she said, "to better understand how the virus changes between species."

Reducing flock sizes would be impossible because of current demand levels, and giving birds more space to reduce the threat of infection would require "sheds as big as Windsor Castle", said Rawson. Enhanced biosecurity measures are already in place.

But as consumers we can "educate ourselves more on exactly what the stickers on chicken carcasses mean" and choose products with labels that "indicate a greater level of oversight into bird health while rearing". If "consumers demonstrate a willingness to pay for those increased costs associated" more suppliers will "adopt" the practices.

What next?

The UK government agency risk assessment still regards outbreaks among humans not linked to contact with infected birds or animals as between "highly unlikely" (10-20%) and "unlikely" (25-35%).

This rating is "still a long way off" from level 6, when there would be sustained human-to-human transmission, the point at which the government would have to make official public health announcements to the population, said inews.

But the "good news" is that, unlike when Covid first emerged, there are already tailored vaccines in production, so if there were an outbreak in the UK, jabs would be "rolled out quickly".

Summing up the danger, Dr Ed Hutchinson, from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, told the BBC that "it's not February 2020" but the threat "does demand our close attention".