Could Avian Influenza Trigger the Next Pandemic After COVID-19?

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After COVID-19, could avian influenza trigger the next pandemic? Until recently, it was thought to be a disease transmissible only among animals, but we have had the first case of a human infected in Texas, United States. But what are the symptoms? And should we be on alert? Avian flu next pandemic, virologists say: "Virus is mutating and will be transmitted to humans." There is alarm in the USA. The symptom presented by the first human case, a worker at a dairy company in Texas, linked to the epidemic of the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus circulating among dairy cattle in the United States is conjunctivitis with bleeding in both eyes, which fortunately does not seem to compromise vision. Identified for the first time in Italy more than a century ago, avian influenza, as read on the ISS website, is a disease of birds caused by an influenza virus of type A, which can be of low or high pathogenicity. Spread all over the world, avian influenza is capable of infecting almost all bird species, albeit with very different manifestations, from milder forms to highly pathogenic and contagious forms that generate acute epidemics. If caused by a highly pathogenic form, the disease arises suddenly, followed by rapid death in almost 100% of cases. The fear of a new pandemic, originating from a transmission of the avian virus to humans, has triggered a series of extraordinary prevention measures around the world. The United States at the moment seems to be more affected especially cattle but we also have the first case of avian flu transmitted to a human. The discussion on Avian flu resumed on March 25, 2024, when federal officials from the United States Department of Agriculture announced that a strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza was detected in dairy cows. It happened in Texas, Kansas, and Michigan, where an unspecified number of specimens tested positive for the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. Since the beginning of the current epidemic in Southeast Asian areas, which began in 2003, the WHO has issued an alert to all international institutions to cooperate in implementing plans and preventive actions to reduce the risk of the virus passing to humans. A necessary condition for viruses that are normally hosted by animals to become pathogenic for humans is that in the process of reassortment they acquire genes from human viruses, which then make them easily transmissible from person to person. The cases of avian influenza in humans recorded during 2003 and 2004 are instead cases of direct transfer from infected poultry to people. In Italy, many virologists seem to be worried about a possible new pandemic that may reoccur. Matteo Bassetti, director of infectious diseases in Genoa, expressed concern about Avian flu, particularly from the fact that it was discovered in a cow because we Westerners get milk and meat from cows, staple foods of our diet. Although at the moment we do not have cases nearby, he believes that attention is necessary. Could there be worse scenarios, such as transmission from human to human? This is the question to which Dr. Clementi tried to answer by proposing solutions for any eventuality. The doctor has developed a "preventive plan" where he indicated how vaccines and antiviral drugs are necessary but especially considering the great incidence among animals, monitoring the farms of different species. The American scientist Eric Topol, executive vice president of Scripps Research, founder and director of Scripps Research Translational Institute, fears submerged contagions, commenting on X the letter to the editor published in the New England Journal of Medicine: "It is possible/probable that other people have been infected" by the highly pathogenic avian A(H5N1) virus that is fueling the ongoing epidemic among cows in the USA, "but have not been diagnosed."