Why scientists are keeping a close eye on a troublesome H5N1 bird flu mutation

08 February 2023

When President Joe Biden gave his 2023 State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, February 7, one of the many things he addressed was the importance of access to health care — especially in light of the deadly toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken. Biden noted that COVID-19 has killed more than 1 million people in the United States.

Worldwide, the COVID-19 death count is over 6.8 million, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. And that makes it the deadliest pandemic since the Spanish flu crisis of 1918/1919.

Virologists have expressed a variety of opinions on how soon the world’s next pandemic will arrive, or what it will be like. But one thing they can agree on is that COVID-19 won’t be the last pandemic; it isn’t a question of whether or not there will be another pandemic, but when. And one virus that scientists are keeping a close eye on, according to STAT reporter Helen Branswell, is the 55N1 bird flu.

In an article published by STAT on February 8, Branswell notes that back in 1997, H5N1 “infected 18 people” and killed six of them. And in October 2022, an H5N1 outbreak at a mink farm in Spain’s Galicia region, according to Branswell, created “the latest round of fears that the virus might be inching closer to acquiring the ability to easily transmit among humans.”

Ron Fouchier, a virologist at Rotterdam, Holland’s Erasmus Medical Center, told STAT, “I still think that this thing is as unpredictable as it has ever been.” And Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told the publication, “Trying to predict what H5N1 will do in the human population absolutely requires a great deal of scientific humility. I will never, ever take H5N1 for granted. I just don’t know what it’s going to do.”

In an opinion column published by the New York Times on February 3, journalist Zeynep Tufekci lays out some reasons why the 55N1 outbreak in Galicia merits careful study. That outbreak, Tufekci notes, involved a “mutant” strain.

“Bird flu — known more formally as avian influenza — has long hovered on the horizons of scientists’ fears,” Tufekci explains. “This pathogen, especially the H5N1 strain, hasn’t often infected humans, but when it has, 56 percent of those known to have contracted it have died. Its inability to spread easily, if at all, from one person to another has kept it from causing a pandemic. But things are changing.”

Tufekci, originally from Istanbul, Turkey and now living in the U.S., continues, “The virus, which has long caused outbreaks among poultry, is infecting more and more migratory birds, allowing it to spread more widely, even to various mammals, raising the risk that a new variant could spread to and among people. Alarmingly, it was recently reported that a mutant H5N1 strain was not only infecting minks at a fur farm in Spain, but also, most likely spreading among them, unprecedented among mammals…. The world needs to act now, before H5N1 has any chance of becoming a devastating pandemic.”

BNO News, on February 7, reported via a Twitter thread that “at least 585 sea lions in Peru have died of H5N1 bird flu,” according to the Peruvian Health Ministry. BNO added that the Peruvian government “also reported the deaths of 55,000 birds, including pelicans and penguins, of H5N1 bird flu.”

Francois Balloux, a biology professor at University College London in the U.K., responded to BNO’s reporting and tweeted, “Context: Mass die-offs of sea mammals caused by avian flu have happened for decades. They are caused by sea mammals feeding on sick and dead birds. They can have a dramatic impact on wildlife, but are largely irrelevant in the context of the risk of an avian flu pandemic.”

Read STAT’s full report at this link.

Read Zeynep Tufekci’s full New York Times column at this link (subscription required).

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