The UK is still “a long way” from being in a situation where bird flu could infect humans and spread in a similar way to Covid-19, an expert from the Animal and Plant Health Agency has said.
“We’ve seen this jump, we’ve not seen maintenance in a mammalian species and, importantly, we haven’t seen a succession of changes in the virus that tell us it’s moving more towards a virus that can infect humans.The UKHSA warned that the “rapid and consistent acquisition of the mutation in mammals may imply this virus has a propensity to cause zoonotic infections”, meaning it could potentially spread to humans.
“So Defra and the devolved administrations are supporting a programme for actively looking for mammals that we believe might scavenge and feed on wild birds. Prof Brown said it was “difficult to control the disease in wild birds” but “what we can do is effectively control the disease in poultry”.“So if you can cut that source of infection off, and we can do that around the world, you reduce the risk of it spilling over into wild birds and evolving further.”
The UKHSA said there was “limited genomic surveillance sampling in wild birds” and “very limited surveillance of mammals”.
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