Health chiefs are tracking bird flu outbreak ‘very carefully’ after two workers test positive
Britain is on red for bird flu after two poultry workers tested positive for the deadly virus.
Health chiefs revealed today that they are monitoring the threat “very carefully” amid mounting fears that another human pandemic is looming.
No signs of human-to-human transmission have yet been observed in the UK.
Officials have already traced the close contacts of the two infected workers in an effort to contain a possible outbreak.
Neither of the two – who worked on the same farm in an undisclosed location – showed any symptoms of the disease. Both have since tested negative after being diagnosed earlier this month.
The new cases come after Alan Gosling (pictured), a retired engineer in Devon, contracted the virus after his ducks, some of which lived in his home, became infected in 2022.
British scientists tasked with developing ‘early human transmission scenarios’ of avian flu have warned that five per cent of people infected could die if the virus takes off in humans (shown in scenario three). In another scenario, the scientists assumed that 1 percent of those infected would be hospitalized and 0.25 percent would die — similar to how deadly Covid was in the fall of 2021 (scenario one). The other saw a 2.5 percent mortality rate (scenario two)
Professor Susan Hopkins, Chief Medical Adviser at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), told BBC Radio 4’s Today program earlier this morning: ‘This is clearly an ongoing risk that we need to monitor very carefully and look at and understand how transmission can occur. .’
Both workers have since “turned negative on PCR smears,” and it remains “uncertain whether they were a true infection,” she confirmed.
There is a real infection if ‘the virus multiplied in their nose and was therefore a danger to others’.
Otherwise, the virus “could have been in the back of the nose due to contamination,” she said.
She told the Today programme: ‘These are people who work in very close contact and proximity with infected birds on infected farms.
“So there’s going to be a lot of dust and a lot of potential virus fragments in the air, but also on the ground, on their clothes when they’re working in this environment.”
“They wear a lot of PPE to avoid getting infected.
“But there is always a risk that this virus and the contaminants from the environment can get under the nose, and that’s why we can detect bird flu if we make swabs from that.”
She added: “We test individuals’ contacts, we provide testing at least to individuals’ contacts.
“We will continue to do that as part of our oversight.”
H5N1 – the avian flu strain behind the current outbreak sweeping the world, believed to be the largest ever – is not easily transmitted between humans.
But mutations in the virus that facilitate mammal-to-mammal transmission could change that, some experts feared.
There are fewer than 900 human cases of H5N1 worldwide, which kills nearly 50 percent of everyone it affects.
The virus is usually picked up through close contact with an infected bird, dead or alive.
Like other forms of the flu, people can become infected if the virus gets into their eyes, nose, or mouth, or is inhaled.
But with bird flu, it usually occurs in people who spend a lot of time with infected creatures, such as bird handlers.
In early 2023, a wave of bird flu cases in humans has emerged.
Earlier this year, a Cambodian man and his daughter were diagnosed with H5N1.
Their cases caused international concern, with many experts fearing the infection was evidence that the virus had mutated to better infect humans after ripping through the world’s bird population.
Further testing revealed that the H5N1 strain was not spreading rapidly among the world’s wild birds among the Cambodian family, but instead a variant known to spread locally in the Prey Veng province in which they lived.
More than 700 confirmed cases of H5N1 have been detected among wild birds in England since September 2022, according to the UKHSA. Pictured above, an outbreak of bird flu in February in Queens Park, Heywood, Rochdale
Both British workers were spotted through routine testing of people who came into contact with infected birds, the UKHSA confirmed yesterday. Neither was mentioned.
The two individuals “were tested repeatedly over a period of time” and “were found to have avian flu in their noses,” Professor Hopkins told the Today programme.
“They didn’t show any symptoms, which is very good and they didn’t pass it on to anyone else,” she added.
“We don’t think this increases the risk to the UK population at this time.”
Since the ongoing outbreak broke out in October 2021, there has been only one case of a Briton becoming infected with H5N1.
Alan Gosling, a retired engineer in Devon, was infected with the virus in early 2022 after his ducks became infected.
He later tested negative while in quarantine for nearly three weeks.
All of Mr Gosling’s 160 ducks — including 20 that lived in his home — were culled after he tested positive.
Government adviser, Professor Ian Brown, the director of scientific services at the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), also said yesterday: ‘Deep surveillance programs of staff in close contact with infected poultry are enlightening in understanding what might be happening.
“To date, from the reported detections in humans, it is clear that careful investigation and interpretation is required.
However, he added: ‘Detection by PCR alone does not necessarily prove active infection and supports that the virus is still strongly avian in its tropism, but programs such as those deployed in Britain are valuable to better understand the real risk these viruses currently pose. to human health.
“The one health join-up approach used in Britain represents best international practice for vigilance.”
The UKHSA’s current advice states that the risk to public health from the virus is very low.
People are advised not to touch or pick up any dead or visibly sick birds they find.
The health authority has currently set the threat level to level three as there is “evidence” of changes in the virus genome that could cause a “mammal infection,” it said.
Any “sustained” transmission of the pathogen from mammal to mammal would raise the threat level to four, while it would rise to five from human to human.
Data from the World Health Organization shows that there have been 873 cases of human infection with the bird flu virus H5N1 worldwide over the past two decades.