{"id":204242,"date":"2025-11-28T05:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T05:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/204242\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T05:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T05:16:09","slug":"bird-flu-could-risk-pandemic-worse-than-covid-if-it-mutates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/204242\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird flu could risk pandemic \u2018worse than Covid\u2019 if it mutates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The bird flu virus that has been spreading among wild birds, poultry and mammals could lead to a pandemic worse than Covid-19 if it mutates to transmit between humans, the head of France\u2019s Institut Pasteur respiratory infections centre has said.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has led to the culling of hundreds of millions of birds in the past few years, disrupting food supplies and driving up prices, though human infections remain rare.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cWhat we fear is the virus adapting to mammals, and particularly to humans, becoming capable of human-to-human transmission, and that virus would be a pandemic virus,\u201d Marie-Anne Rameix-Welti, medical director at the Institut Pasteur\u2019s respiratory infections centre, told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The Institut Pasteur was among the first European labs to develop and share Covid-19 detection tests, making protocols available to the World Health Organization and labs worldwide.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Chickens being culled in Tienray, the Netherlands, after avian influenza was confirmed. Photo: EPA\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/992d0bba-5008-4d7c-be74-a4154295511c_a2d7c9dd.jpg\" title=\"Chickens being culled in Tienray, the Netherlands, after avian influenza was confirmed. Photo: EPA\"\/>Chickens being culled in Tienray, the Netherlands, after avian influenza was confirmed. Photo: EPA<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">People have antibodies against common H1 and H3 seasonal flu, but none against the H5 bird flu affecting birds and mammals, like they had none against Covid-19, she said.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">And unlike Covid-19, which mainly affects vulnerable people, flu viruses can also kill healthy individuals, including children, Rameix-Welti said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bird flu virus that has been spreading among wild birds, poultry and mammals could lead to a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[112419,50660,64,372,18,112414,112420,112417,85859,112413,46377,112416,135,19,7088,17,112418,32813,112415],"class_list":{"0":"post-204242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-avian-influenza-virus","9":"tag-bird-flu","10":"tag-covid-19","11":"tag-egypt","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-frances-institut-pasteur","14":"tag-gregorio-torres","15":"tag-h1","16":"tag-h3","17":"tag-h5-bird-flu-viruses","18":"tag-h5n1","19":"tag-h5n5","20":"tag-health","21":"tag-ie","22":"tag-indonesia","23":"tag-ireland","24":"tag-marie-anne-rameix-welti","25":"tag-poultry","26":"tag-world-organisation-for-animal-health"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115625629304476707","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}