Researchers: Dreaded Virus 'Flies Under the Radar' – Could Infect in Secret

This is the view of Thomas Peacock, a leading epidemiologist specialising in the spread of viruses from animals to humans, from the Pirbright Institute.

He is talking about the H5N1 virus, known as bird flu, which can be transmitted covertly due to major failures in monitoring and controlling the spread of the virus.

– What keeps us awake at night is the possibility that invisible chains of infection are silently spreading through farm barns, pig pens or developing countries and developing under the radar because testing criteria are narrow and authorities' resources are so small, says Thomas Peacock. Sky News.

WHO: Concerns over human-to-human spread

Earlier this year, the World Health Organization sounded the alarm about the risk of H5N1 virus starting to spread to humans.

Concerns have been raised after several mammalian species, especially livestock, were infected in the United States.

“The big concern, of course, is that the virus is now evolving and developing the ability to infect humans and then the ability to pass from human to human, as ducks and chickens become infected and then more and more mammals,” Jeremy Farrar, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, told the Guardian in the spring.

go under the radar

But it is this development that risks going under the radar, says Thomas Peacock.

The researcher points out that in the United States, where the virus is spreading in dairy cows and where four people working on farms have been infected, they failed to monitor and control the spread for several months.

– The severity of a future H5N1 pandemic remains unclear, Peacock says.

He believes new measures are needed to control the virus. Among other things, vaccination, which Finland became the first country in the world to offer this summer.

FHM: Everyone with symptoms should be tested

So far, there is no evidence that H5N1 is spreading between humans.

However, there have been hundreds of cases where people have become infected through contact with animals. The mortality rate among infected people is 52 percent, according to the World Health Organization.

In June, the Public Health Agency announced that all patients in Sweden who are admitted to hospital with flu symptoms must be tested for bird flu.

– Avian influenza is a pathogen that has the potential to cause a pandemic among humans, something that we and other authorities must be prepared for, state epidemiologist Magnus Gislin told Läkemedelsvärlden last summer.

Read more: Public Health Agency: All Swedish patients with symptoms should be tested

Photo: Cynthia Goldsmith, CDC, M. Sanchez

Text: Editors