{"id":6437,"date":"2024-04-24T09:33:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T14:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=6437"},"modified":"2024-04-24T09:33:33","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T14:33:33","slug":"why-the-whos-chief-scientist-is-concerned-about-bird-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/04\/24\/why-the-whos-chief-scientist-is-concerned-about-bird-flu\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the WHO\u2019s chief scientist is concerned about bird flu"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2024\/04\/19\/why-whos-chief-scientist-is-concerned-about-bird-flu\/\">Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The&nbsp;<strong>World Health Organization<\/strong>\u2019s chief scientist called the bird flu an \u201cenormous concern,\u201d citing critical questions over how the virus is transmitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jeremy Farrar\u00a0<\/strong>singled out the recent outbreak in dairy cows in the United States \u2014 the first time the country\u2019s dairy cattle have been infected with the highly pathogenic avian influenza.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With H5N1 infecting mammals, the \u201cgreat concern\u201d is that the virus could evolve and allow for human-to-human transmission, Farrar said at a news conference yesterday.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right now, there\u2019s no indication the virus has the ability to do so, but experts and officials say it\u2019s imperative they closely monitor H5N1\u2019s spread.&nbsp;<strong>The more chances a virus has to replicate \u2014 in animals or humans \u2014 the greater the chance it could mutate to spread more easily from human to human.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How we got here:\u00a0<\/strong>A highly virulent bird flu was first detected in dairy cows in<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2024\/03\/26\/bird-flu-dairy-cattle-symptoms\/?itid=lk_inline_manual_13\">\u00a0<u>Texas and Kansas<\/u><\/a>\u00a0in late March and has since spread to<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aphis.usda.gov\/livestock-poultry-disease\/avian\/avian-influenza\/hpai-detections\/livestock\">\u00a0<u>six<\/u><strong><u>\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><u>additional states.<\/u><\/a>\u00a0On April 1, federal officials announced that<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2024\/04\/01\/bird-flu-human-case-cow-texas\/?itid=lk_inline_manual_13\">\u00a0<u>a dairy worker<\/u><\/a>\u00a0in Texas was being treated for bird flu after experiencing eye inflammation, marking only the second human case in the United States. (The first was identified in 2022 in Colorado for the same strain of avian flu.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2024\/04\/19\/why-whos-chief-scientist-is-concerned-about-bird-flu\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington Post The&nbsp;World Health Organization\u2019s chief scientist called the bird flu an \u201cenormous concern,\u201d citing critical questions over how the virus is transmitted. Jeremy Farrar\u00a0singled out the recent outbreak in dairy cows in the United States \u2014 the first time the country\u2019s dairy cattle have been infected with the highly pathogenic avian influenza.\u00a0 With H5N1 [&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-6437","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\/6437","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=6437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6438,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437\/revisions\/6438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}