Medical microbiologist Emmanuel André (UZ Leuven) again warns of the danger of the unprecedented global outbreak of bird flu. After all, it also poses dangers for humans. “The risk of a pandemic is increasing month by month,” he says.
Dozens of dead birds wash up every day on the beaches of the Walcheren peninsula in Zeeland. On Tuesday there were even 250. They probably died from the bird flu. Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans calls the impact of the global outbreak of H5 bird flu among animals “dramatic”.
A deadly variant of the bird flu virus also claimed the lives of thousands of seabirds on the British east coast a month ago. They washed ashore from Scotland in the north to Suffolk in the south. Bird flu has also been diagnosed in our country, including in some Limburg municipalities.
Bird flu free
Since the beginning of June, our country has been declared bird flu-free again, a few weeks after the poultry house obligation was undone. However, according to the Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FAVV), caution is still required. “The virus is still actively circulating in wild bird populations in Europe and the risk of contamination for poultry and bird farms remains real,” it said at the time.
Emmanuel André is also concerned. “The avian flu has never killed so many wild birds,” he says. “Last year, some 100 million poultry were culled to contain the epidemic. The massive spread of this virus is affecting the human population. danger, because the more the virus circulates, the more likely it is to mutate and adapt to humans, and the more the virus circulates, the more likely it is to encounter humans, so the risk of a pandemic increases from month to month up.”
cleared
More than 22 million cases of bird flu have been reported in 68 countries this season, according to data from the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) requested by the British newspaper ‘The Telegraph’. That is twice as many as in the period between October 2020 and September 2021. 94.2 million poultry have also been culled, considerably more than the 54.4 million of last season.
In addition to the health risk, this also leads to higher prices for consumers. Prices already under pressure due to rising food insecurity caused by the extreme weather and the war in Ukraine.
Rapport
The most recent European surveillance report on highly pathogenic viruses (i.e. viruses that are highly contagious and cause serious disease) from a month ago did state that the risk of infection at that time was low for the general population in the European Union and low to moderate for people who come into professional contact with birds.
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