Top virologists sound the alarm on bird flu and plead with world leaders to prepare for another pandemic
Leading virologists from over 40 countries are sounding the alarm over the increasing threat of H5N1 avian flu—which can cause coughing, body aches, fatigue, pneumonia, and other symptoms in humans—urging global leaders to step up with a range of measures and to use knowledge gained during the COVID pandemic.
'In the U.S. sporadic human infections with no known contact with infected animals highlight the possibility of viral adaptation for efficient human-to-human transmission,' Global Virus Network (GVN) scientists write in a commentary published this week in The Lancet Regional Health–Americas. 'Concurrently, the virus continues to circulate in wild birds, backyard flocks, and hunted migratory species, further amplifying the risk to humans and domestic animals.'
The experts compel leaders to address the issue by boosting surveillance, enhancing biosecurity, and preparing for potential human-to-human viral transmission.
The authors note that more than 995 dairy cow herds and at least 70 people have been infected with H5N1, including severe cases and the first reported U.S. death.
'Understanding the current landscape of H5N1 infections is critical for effective prevention and response,' Dr. Sten H. Vermund, chief medical officer of the GVN and dean of the USF Health College of Public Health at the University of South Florida, said in a press release. 'The virus's ability to infect both animals and humans, combined with recent genetic changes, underscores the importance of proactive surveillance and rapid response measures.'
The highly pathogenic influenza virus is now circulating in all 50 states and Canada, the virologists warn, resulting in the loss or culling of more than 168 million poultry animals in the U.S. since 2022. While human-to-human transmission is not documented, experts warn that virus mutations or the combination of two flu viruses could increase transmissibility.
The researchers made several recommendations:
Continuously monitoring animals, including testing milk, wastewater, and people working with infected animals, to track virus evolution that may lead to human-to human transmissibility.
Accelerating the sharing of genomic data among global research networks to track virus evolution and spread.
Using personal protective equipment and strict farm-cleaning protocols.
Advocating for self-administered diagnostic tests for farmworkers and health care access for frontline medical workers.
Providing more funding for responses, especially in high-risk regions.
Investing in predicting traits of avian flu viruses from genetic data.
Developing and rapidly administering vaccines to people and animals.
Conducting clinical studies on the properties of emerging virus strains, potential therapies, and vaccines.
'A robust nationwide monitoring system is essential to quickly detect and quarantine affected animals and implement preventive measures to curb further spread and human infections,' said Elyse Stachler, GVN member and a research scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. 'Further, we believe it is crucial to maintain trust and stakeholder buy-in for monitoring programs, particularly from farmworkers.'
'We are advocating for community-driven strategies to ensure the successful implementation of vaccines, if necessary,' said Dr. Christian Bréchot, president emeritus of the GVN and director of the USF Health Microbiomes Institute and senior associate dean for research in global affairs in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. 'The situation with H5N1 demands heightened vigilance and collaboration across public health sectors. Early detection and robust surveillance are critical to prevent further spread.'
More on infectious disease:
At this rate, measles could become endemic again within 2 decades, researchers warn
As measles spreads throughout the U.S., here's how to tell if you need a booster shot
What are the symptoms of bird flu and how does it spread?
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Every 30 minutes, someone arrives at an ER with a gunshot wound, according to the CDC
The COVID-19 pandemic and its corresponding increase in shootings sparked a national conversation around firearm injury, emergency room visits, and the treatment of gun violence victims in hospitals. Five years later, the conversation has faded, but new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that gun violence remains a stubborn presence across the country, with 93,022 shooting injuries treated in hospitals from 2018 to 2023. According to the research, an American emergency room treats at least one firearm injury every 30 minutes. 'Most cities use police data to inform prevention planning, but data from hospital and public health sources is an essential, and often missing, piece to guide action, as many incidents of violence and crime are not reported to police,' said Dr. Adam Rowh, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC and lead author of the study, via e-mail to The Trace. The study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine in April, analyzed the CDC's data on emergency department firearm injuries, which is limited to the District of Columbia and nine states: Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. The study showed that the monthly rates for shooting injuries were highest in July and lowest in February; daily rates were disproportionately high on holidays, and nighttime peaks were the highest on Friday and Saturday, consistent with prior research. The researchers also found that rates were highest between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m., and were the lowest between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. The authors of the study concluded that knowing the periods when gunshot injuries are highest could be essential both in deploying care and in effectively allocating resources, such as trauma preparedness, ambulance services, hospital staffing, and strategies for intervention. One of those strategies is hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs), an effort aimed at mitigating reinjury by providing holistic and rehabilitative care to shooting victims. The model, first developed 30 years ago, has spread nationwide, and various programs fund their services through myriad resources, most notably through grants now facing the threat of cuts and closures. 'It's happening on every front,' January Serda, the grant coordinator of one such program in Newport News, Virginia, said of federal cuts to community violence intervention funding, education, and healthcare. Dr. Randi Smith, a trauma surgeon who launched an HVIP at Grady Memorial Hospital, in Atlanta, said she has attended to a gunshot victim on every one of her on-call days in the trauma center. Financial and social investment in such programs is as paramount to treatment as life-saving medical care, she emphasized. 'I was very motivated to start a violence intervention program, taking best practices from some of the programs that I have been a part of and shortcomings that I had learned from the past,' Smith said. The program she started in 2023, Interrupting Violence Among Youth and Young Adults, is one of the few based in the Southeast. The program has served more than a thousand people, including survivors and their family members. According to Smith, its reinjury rates are less than 3 percent, compared with national benchmarks that are up to 30 percent and institutional benchmarks that are between 12 percent and 15 percent. Her work has a long legacy. Nearly four decades ago, physicians and nurses—especially those with public health experience—were among the first cohort of medical practitioners to recognize gun violence as a public health issue. That recognition was largely based on what they witnessed in hospitals and emergency rooms, as the rate of shootings reached historic highs in the 1980s and 1990s. Those firsthand accounts were pivotal in the development of the nation's first hospital-based violence intervention programs. Serda, the grant coordinator for an HVIP in Virginia, said in today's multilayered crisis, it's more paramount than ever to prioritize care for the people on the frontlines. She came to violence intervention from nonprofit management and fundraising for survivors of sexual assault in 2022, after her 17-year-old son, Justice Dunham, was fatally shot in a high school parking lot after a basketball game. 'I was blown away by the lack of training around trauma-informed care, or safe spaces and outlets, for nurses and practitioners, and people who are seeing this firsthand and helping the community,' said Serda, who began to advocate for trauma-informed initiatives designed to help patients, her HVIP team and others address the emotional impact of caring for victims of violence and firearm injuries. 'There was no discussion about compassion fatigue, burnout, or vicarious trauma.' As hospital personnel adjust to the ever-evolving firearm violence crisis, Smith said listening to their experiences, and supporting their well-being, has never been more crucial. 'I think a lot of people are looking at the recent news, post-pandemic, that shootings have decreased, and have not realized that we as hospital staff are still treating patients day after day,' said Smith, 'dealing with a medical environment that shifted significantly since the pandemic, and navigating extreme burnout.' This story was produced by The Trace and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
A quarter of the world's population are adolescents: major report sets out health and wellbeing trends
The Lancet has released its second global commission report on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing. Adolescents are defined as 10- to 24-year-olds. The report builds on the first one, done in 2016. The latest report presents substantial original research that supports actions it recommends to be taken across sectors as well as at global, regional, country and local level. The co-chairs of the commission, Sarah Baird, Alex Ezeh and Russell Viner, together with the youth commissioners lead, Shakira Choonara, give a guide to the report's findings. The report noted significant improvements in some aspects of adolescent health and wellbeing since the 2016 report. These include reductions in: communicable, maternal and nutritional diseases, particularly among female adolescents the burden of disease from injuries substance use, specifically tobacco and alcohol teenage pregnancy. It also found that there had been an increase in age at first marriage and in education, especially for young women. Despite this progress, adolescent health and wellbeing is said to be at a tipping point. Continued progress is being undermined by rapidly escalating rates of non-communicable diseases and mental disorders, accompanied by threats from compounding and intersecting megatrends. These include climate change and environmental degradation, the growing power of commercial influences on health, rising conflict and displacement, rapid urbanisation, and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These megatrends are outpacing responses from national governments and the international community. Born between 2000 and 2014, this is the first cohort of humans who will live their entire life in a time when the average annual global temperature has consistently been 0.5°C or higher above pre-industrial levels. At roughly 2 billion adolescents, they are the largest cohort of adolescents in the history of humanity. And this number will not be surpassed as populations age and fertility rates fall in even the poorest countries. They are the first generation of global digital natives. They live in a world of immense resources and opportunities, with unprecedented connectedness made possible by the rapid expansion of digital technologies. This is true even in the hardest-to-reach places. Growing participation in secondary and tertiary education is equipping adolescents of all genders with new economic opportunities and providing pathways out of poverty. These opportunities, however, are not being realised for most adolescents. Increasing numbers continue to grow up in settings with limited opportunities. In addition, investments in adolescent health and wellbeing continue to lag relative to their population share or their share of the global burden of disease. Investments in adolescents accounted for only 2.4% of the total development assistance for health in 2016-2021. This was despite the fact that adolescents accounted for 25.2% of the global population in that period and 9.1% of the total burden of disease. We use development assistance as a measure because, while governments also invest in adolescents, it's difficult to account for how much this is. For example, when a government supports a health facility, it serves the entire population. Yet, the report provides evidence to show that the return on investments in adolescent health and wellbeing is highly cost-effective and at par with investments in children. The report recognises the special place of Africa in the global future of adolescents. It notes that, by the end of this century, nearly half of all adolescents will live in Africa. Currently, adolescents in Africa experience higher burdens of communicable, maternal and nutritional diseases, at more than double the global average for both male and female adolescents. They also have a higher prevalence of anaemia, adolescent childbearing, early marriage and HIV infection. They are much less likely to complete 12 years of schooling and more likely to not be in education, employment, or training. Female adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa have the highest adolescent fertility rate at 99.4 births per 1,000 female adolescents aged 15-19 (the global average is 41.8). They have also experienced the slowest decline between 2016 and 2022. Globally, there was progress in reducing child marriage between 2016 and 2022. But in eight countries in 2022, at least one in three female adolescents aged 15–19 years was married. All but one of these eight countries were in sub-Saharan Africa. Niger (50.2%) and Mali (40.6%) had the highest proportion of married female adolescents. The practice of child marriage is declining in south Asia and becoming more concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. As the report notes: it continues because of cultural norms, fuelled by economic hardships, insurgency, conflict, ambiguous legal provisions, and lack of political will to enforce legal provisions. Beyond adolescent sexual and reproductive health concerns in sub-Saharan Africa, obesity is increasing fastest in the region. This illustrates the vulnerability of adolescents to the power of commercial interests. Since 1990, obesity and overweight has increased by 89% in prevalence among adolescents aged 15–19 years in sub-Saharan Africa. This is the largest regional increase. The absence of data on adolescents is a problem. Adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa are absent in many data systems. For example, data on adolescent mental health in sub-Saharan Africa is virtually absent. Stronger data systems are needed to understand and track progress on the complex set of determinants of adolescent health and wellbeing. Another area of concern is the massive inequities within countries, often gendered or by geography. While female adolescents in Kenya are experiencing substantial declines in the burden of HIV and sexually transmitted infections, adolescent males are experiencing increasing burdens. In South Africa, years of healthy life lost to maternal disorders show more than 10-fold differences between the Western Cape and North West provinces. Where there's been strong political leadership, remarkable changes have been seen. Take the case of Benin Republic. The adolescent fertility rate in the country declined from 26% in 1996 to 20% in 2018 and child marriage from 39% to 31% over the same period. Strong political leadership has also led to substantial reductions in female genital mutilation or cutting. This fell from 12% of girls in Benin in 2001 to 2% in 2011–12 among 15–19-year-old girls in Benin Republic. Political leadership also facilitated the expansion, by the national parliament in 2021, of the grounds under which women, girls, and their families could access safe and legal abortion. But for every country that takes positive steps to protect the health and wellbeing of adolescents, several others regress. The last decade has witnessed regression in several countries. In 2024, The Gambia attempted to repeal a 2015 law criminalising all acts of female genital mutilation or cutting. In 2022, Nigeria's federal government ordered the removal of sex education from the basic education curriculum. The report calls for a multisectoral approach across multiple national ministries and agencies, including the office of the head of state, and within the UN system. Coordination and accountability mechanisms for adolescent health and wellbeing also need to be strengthened. Laws and policies are needed to protect the health and rights of adolescents, reduce the impact of the commercial determinants of health, and promote healthy use of digital and social media spaces and platforms. Strong political leadership at local, national, and global levels is essential. The report also calls for prioritised investments, the creation of enabling environments to transform adolescent health and wellbeing, and the development of innovative approaches to address complex and emerging health threats. It calls for meaningful engagement of adolescents in policy, research, interventions and accountability mechanisms that affect them. Without these concerted actions, we risk failing our young people and losing out on the investments being made in childhood at this second critical period in their development. The current adverse international aid climate is particularly affecting adolescents as much development assistance relates to gender and sexual and reproductive health. Concerted action in addressing adolescent health and wellbeing is an urgent imperative for sub-Saharan Africa. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Alex Ezeh, Drexel University; Russell Viner, UCL, and Sarah Baird, George Washington University Read more: Canada must take action to prevent climate-related migration We design cities and buildings for earthquakes and floods — we need to do the same for wildfires Eating wild meat carries serious health risks – why it still happens along the Kenya-Tanzania border Alex Ezeh is a fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (Stias). Russell Viner and Sarah Baird do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
"We dissent": NIH scientists sign declaration against Trump's research cuts
National Institute of Health scientists signed a declaration decrying the cuts to healthcare and medical research by the Trump administration on Monday. Ninety-two scientists added their names to a letter, the Bethesda Declaration, which calls out the Trump administration's handling of the NIH and the cutting of more than 2,100 research grants and contracts, totaling more than $12 billion in federal funding. The letter, named for NIH's headquarters in Maryland, expresses the scientists' "dissent" and outrage over Trump administration policies "that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe." The declaration points to canceled studies, including work on the long-lasting effects of COVID-19 and climate change-related health impacts. "Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million," the declaration states, "it wastes $4 million." Along with the 92 named signatories, more than 250 scientists at the NIH signed the declaration anonymously. "We include anonymous signers and speak for countless others at NIH," the letter concluded, "who share our concerns but who — due to a culture of fear and suppression created by this Administration — chose not to sign their names for fear of retaliation."The declaration was delivered to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya on Monday. Bhattacharya said the declaration "has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months." "Nevertheless," he continued, "respectful dissent in science is productive. We all want the NIH to succeed."