{"id":11187,"date":"2026-01-07T20:19:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T02:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11187"},"modified":"2026-01-07T20:19:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T02:19:43","slug":"its-completely-out-of-control-scientists-warn-bird-flu-could-spark-a-human-pandemic-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/01\/07\/its-completely-out-of-control-scientists-warn-bird-flu-could-spark-a-human-pandemic-in-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s completely out of control\u2019: Scientists warn bird flu could spark a human pandemic in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/news\/bird-flu-2026-analysis\">Science Focus<\/a> Bird flu has been rampaging through wildlife and farm animals worldwide. Will it make the long-feared jump to people? When a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu strain of avian influenza (H5N1) began sweeping across wild birds and poultry in 2020, it already looked concerning. Five years on, the picture has grown darker and stranger than most would have imagined.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The virus has infected hundreds of millions of farm animals, spilled into mammals at an unprecedented scale, devastated wildlife, and \u2013 in the United States \u2013 established itself in dairy cattle, a species no one expected to see implicated. Human cases remain rare. But virologists say the trajectory is troubling, the data patchy and the future uncertain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s now a global problem,\u201d says&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gla.ac.uk\/schools\/infectionimmunity\/staff\/edwardhutchinson\/\">Dr Ed Hutchinson<\/a>, professor of molecular and cellular virology at the University of Glasgow. \u201cAs a disease of wild animals, it\u2019s completely out of control. It\u2019s raging around the world, and there\u2019s no feasible containment method other than just watching it infect huge populations of animals.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Science Focus Bird flu has been rampaging through wildlife and farm animals worldwide. Will it make the long-feared jump to people? When a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu strain of avian influenza (H5N1) began sweeping across wild birds and poultry in 2020, it already looked concerning. Five years on, the picture has grown darker [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avian-influenza"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11188,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11187\/revisions\/11188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}