Bird flu, or avian influenza, is spreading among livestock and other mammals in the United States, raising concerns that another pandemic may be looming. Last month, California declared a state of emergency due to rising cases in dairy cattle, and there have been over 65 human cases in the U.S. during this outbreak. While cases have been largely mild and risk to the public is still considered low, scientists warn it could evolve and become more dangerous. Curious about other health updates? Email us at [email protected] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is bird flu and why is it a concern?
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey Shore Wavers, Regina Barber here to talk about the bird flu, also known as avian influenza. It's spreading among livestock and other mammals in the U.S. and raising fears that another pandemic is in our future. So bird flu got into the news when a farm worker was infected in the spring of last year.
And last month, California declared a state of emergency due to rising cases in dairy cattle. So here to parse through the data is health correspondent Will Stone. Hey, Will.
Hey, Gina.
Chapter 2: What are the current statistics on bird flu cases?
Will, you've been monitoring bird flu ever since the first case almost a year ago, and there's so much to cover. But can we start with like a refresher? What's happened like so far?
Sure thing. So there have been more than 65 human cases in the US during this current outbreak. And there's reason to believe that's probably an undercount. Luckily, these have largely been mild. Many are presenting as conjunctivitis and sometimes as a cold, although there have been a few that have resulted in serious illness.
And just to refresh listeners, a bird flu infection starts when the protein on the virus binds to a receptor on the cell it wants to take over. This is the HA protein on the bird flu virus. Luckily, the version of H5N1 spreading in cattle has not evolved to target the receptors that dominate upper airways in humans in the way that people get infected with seasonal influenza every year.
That would be a key step in the path to this becoming a pandemic.
But scientists warn it could evolve, right, and be more dangerous. I mean, do you have a sense of how worried scientists are?
Yeah, scientists who study influenza have told me they are about as worried as they've ever been about a potential bird flu pandemic. Now, that doesn't mean it will necessarily happen. Dr. Jesse Goodman, an infectious disease physician at Georgetown University and a former FDA official, put it this way to me.
This is like some... brush burning around your house that you better pay attention to because it could turn into something else.
So today on the show, paying attention to bird flu. We get into the infection landscape, how the government is preparing, and the future of immunity. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. OK, well, let's back up. So in March 2024, almost a year ago, researchers found bird flu in cattle.
But the global outbreak of bird flu has been going on for a while, right?
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Chapter 3: How does bird flu infection occur in humans?
So the federal government has put in orders with vaccine makers for these updated shots. It's expected there'll be about 10 million of them stockpiled by early spring. These are two dose shots. So clearly, Gina, this is not nearly enough.
I mean, if the bird flu does escalate into this like big crisis, we're going to need to vaccinate like the whole population. So we're going to need like so much more than 10 million vaccines. Yeah.
Yeah. Only compounding the issue here is that these vaccines rely on older technology. And so they can't just be churned out, you know, in a rapid timeframe.
And making things even more difficult is that the federal government doesn't want to preemptively make hundreds of millions of these shots because if bird flu does evolve significantly and can spread among humans, we expect it's going to look different and they may need to update the shot again. So it's a
tricky situation of kind of cautiously monitoring the situation, but not going all in on vaccines that we have yet.
You talk about this like old technology. Is the government investing in like mRNA vaccine tech, which we used for like the COVID vaccines?
It is. That's actually one of the main things they're doing in the development of new vaccines, hoping that we can have some shots ready that could be
Produced a lot faster, uh, with mRNA technology, uh, the U S department of health and human services actually announced this month that they've awarded over $500 million to Moderna, uh, which came up with the COVID vaccine to work on influenza vaccines, you know, including to protect against bird flu. Um,
There's still work going on in clinical trials, so we don't have these mRNA shots stockpiled and ready to go. But if there's an emergency, perhaps we could see a big all-out government effort like we did during COVID with Operation Warp Speed.
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