The past two years have seen an unprecedented global spread of bird flu. Moving along migratory bird flyways into Europe and the Americas, new strains of H5N1 influenza colonized wild and poultry, killing a record 58.6 million birds in the United States and causing new infections across Latin America and the Caribbean. an occurrence has occurred. The spread of this strain in birds, mammals, and sporadic cases of human infection (one fatal) have raised concerns of a pandemic flu.
Last October, the virus was likely transmitted among farmed mink in Spain and may have spread among sea lions during mass mortality events in Peru earlier this year. Their susceptibility to viral and dramatic genetic alterations challenges predictions about which viral subtypes will emerge as future pandemics. But each such event is another warning of viral churn, a portrait of a mutated pathogen that can produce viruses that can infect and spread between humans.
This is a numbers game and a game we are losing.
Opportunities to invest in prevention and close global detection and response gaps must be seized to avert an influenza pandemic. But what should we improve?
Pandemics are a byproduct of how humans live on this planet. We are intimately connected across a landscape that has been actively transformed as we try to accommodate and feed more than 8 billion people. Influenza is no exception. The surge in demand for meat and eggs is changing animal production and land-use patterns, creating ever-greater animal-human contact and increasing the risk of a pandemic. But reducing the risk of pandemic flu is within our reach.
There is an immediate need to reduce the risk of the virus circulating between wild and domestic animals and double down on upstream precautions. On farms, biosecurity is enhanced by restricting access, restricting movement of vehicles and equipment, and enforcing strict worker disinfection protocols. help. Limiting contact between livestock and wild birds is essential, especially at shared water sources. In England, poultry exposure has been reduced by an order requiring all poultry owners to keep their poultry indoors. Early warning surveillance and bird migration patterns can help narrow down housing orders during periods of peak risk.
Common global market-based live poultry sales also carry risks. Livelihoods depend on these markets. But we can make them safer. Separating high-risk activities such as on-site slaughtering, dressing and processing from point-of-sale can help reduce exposure to the virus. These protocols should be reinforced by regular cleaning and disinfection, market rest days, avoidance of species mixing, and prohibition of overnight rearing of poultry, all of which have been proven to reduce virus circulation. I’m here.
Strategic vaccination of poultry could have the impact of trade restrictions on poultry-exporting countries, while also significantly reducing virus circulation if other containment measures fail. Guangdong Province, China When WHO began mass vaccination of poultry with the H7 vaccine in 2017, human cases of zoonotic influenza A/H7N9 fell by 98% within one year.
Together, these upstream measures minimize human exposure and cut off virus exchange between wild birds, poultry, and other animals. The costs cannot be borne solely by farmers and companies along the production chain to the table. Instead, these interventions should be viewed as investments to protect public health. The newly launched Pandemic Fund can play a key role in building the animal health capacity needed for safe, reliable and sustainable animal production and disease prevention.
The investment case is clear. Spend moderately on prevention now, or pay the cost of devastating health and social disruption later. What is the price of such a global prevention architecture? $11.5 billion per year. In contrast, the global economy shrank by 3.1% from his COVID in 2020 to more than $2.7 trillion, an economic hit expected to last through 2023. A spillover that causes an outbreak.
But prevention alone should not be relied upon to combat pandemic influenza. It also requires fine-tuning surveillance structures to detect signals from influenza viruses exhibiting worrisome mutations in both traditional and unexpected locations, where there is a mix of animal and human populations and risk of spillover. I have. These structures need to be looked around to track viruses in new animal hosts and inform risk assessments. And their range must be expanded dramatically.
Frontline healthcare workers around the world must be alert to unusual patterns of respiratory illness and be prepared to quickly identify and stop human-to-human clusters when they occur. COVID has extended the existing ability to identify acute respiratory infections in humans. you have to take advantage of them. Influenza is not the only viral threat in this pandemic era. As we proposed in 2017, these syndromic surveillance platforms should broadly detect both known and unknown respiratory viruses.
The key is to expand stockpiles of pre-pandemic influenza vaccines. These vaccines must be produced, pre-approved and pre-deployed equitably around the world. Pre-arranged vaccines, antiviral drugs, personal protective equipment, and rapid testing can save precious weeks or months in a growing epidemic, break chains of transmission, and avert a pandemic. , can save lives.
Finally, hoping history doesn’t repeat itself shouldn’t be our pandemic flu contingency plan. Involving community he leaders in scenario planning should start now. And we need Engineer Her Messaging his campaign to learn from COVID and unite the global community on a shared vision to prevent the next pandemic.
Reassuringly, there is progress. An enhanced monitoring alert has been issued. A surge capacity planning tool is available. A pre-pandemic influenza vaccine virus based on the new clade 2.3.4.4b strain has been proposed. And paradigm-shifting, palm-sized gene sequencing platforms have come to bring the lab into the field. These devices convert samples into complete viral genome sequences in less than a day and make them readily available in gene repositories. Combining these field diagnostics with air samplers placed in live animal markets and other high-risk, high-contact locations can approach near real-time influenza monitoring.
Migratory birds soon migrate northward to their summer breeding grounds, providing the potential for new introductions of the virus. Yes, the flu is turbulent, but these strategies can be scaled up to stay ahead of the next epidemic. The choice before us is to take it or not.
The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of USAID, the U.S. Government, or the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily Scientific American.
