The new strain of virus infects wild birds easily but leading experts said it's harder for it to infect human cells. Read more at straitstimes.com.
CHICAGO - A new strain of bird flu that transmits easily among wild birds has triggered an explosive spread into new corners of the globe, infecting and killing a variety of mammals species and raising fears of a pandemic more lethal than Covid-19.
The virus has also infected mammals ranging from foxes and grizzly bears to seals and sea lions, likely from feeding on diseased birds. The way this virus enters and infects cells is one reason for the muted concern, flu experts said. They say the attributes that have made this virus thrive in wild birds likely make it less infectious to people.
“Everybody take a breath,” Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota who has tracked H5N1 since it first emerged in 1997, said of those sounding alarm bells.What raised concern among virologists was a study published in January in the medical journal Eurosurveillance showing potential mammal-to-mammal transmission of the virus on a mink farm in Spain.
Although the exact changes required for a bird flu virus to become easily transmissible in people are not known, a pair of landmark studies done a decade ago offer some clues. What has not changed, even in mink, is that the virus still prefers to bind to avian-type receptors to enter and infect cells. Mink have both avian and human-type receptors, but avian receptors are scarce in humans and located deep in the lungs.“We know that avian viruses can occasionally affect people, but it takes what appears to be lots and lots of contact with birds,” said Dr James Lowe, a professor of veterinary clinical medicine at the University of Illinois.
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