With summer travel picking up, health officials are concerned about the potential of another COVID outbreak—but that’s not the only deadly virus spreading worldwide. The H5N1 bird flu, which typically spreads through contact with sick or dead infected wild birds, has been detected in domestic cats, dairy cows, and more than 100 million birds in 48 U.S. states, according to The Atlantic. And while bird flu usually isn’t transmissible to people, human cases are also on the rise. Now, the ongoing surge is prompting professionals, like influenza expert Richard Webby, to categorize this strain of bird flu as a “super virus.”
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Known as “highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1,” this bird flu variant started popping up in late 2021, per The Atlantic. Since then, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state health departments have confirmed human bird flu cases in Colorado, Texas, and Michigan.
Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that 71 workers at a commercial egg-laying farm in Colorado were tested for the disease after exhibiting bird flu symptoms. According to the CDC, infected people may experience eye redness, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle aches, headaches, and tiredness. In more advanced cases, high fever, shortness of breath, and difficulty breathing may occur.
Of those exposed, six farmers tested positive. But while these numbers are remarkably low, it does mark the most human bird flu cases in a state.
Health experts remain cautiously optimistic about the potential of the human bird flu epidemic.
The bird flu possibly “could disappear,” Webby told The Atlantic. This would be the best-case scenario, but it’s also the least likely due to the resources and cost it would take to completely wipe out the virus from dairy herds and poultry farms, not to mention the time and research that would need to be dedicated to implementing preventive measures.
However, flu expert David Tophman argued that “it’s going to be a lot more costly to deal with another pandemic than to deal with immunizing our farms.”
This leads health experts to warn of the worst-case scenario: A human bird flu pandemic.
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Right now, infected humans have only contracted the disease through sick cattle or chickens. It’s worth noting that these individuals are also farmworkers who are exposed to wild animals on a daily basis. Thus, their likelihood of getting bird flu is higher than those who don't work with animals.
The trajectory of the current bird flu outbreak in mammals leads doctors to believe that the virus can’t be transmitted between humans, which would be “absolutely the worst-case scenario,” per Webby.
“There is no evidence at this point that this virus is going human to human, and therefore it really does not pose a threat to public health,” Jenna Guthmiller, an immunologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, told The Atlantic.
However, health officials are closely monitoring how the virus is evolving and whether it will develop the ability to replicate in human cells.
According to Webby, the “most-likely” scenario is that the bird flu will continue to leech onto wild birds, cows, and chickens. Of course, this only increases the odds of more farm workers becoming sick and potentially spreading the disease to others.
“It’s like playing the lottery,” explained Topham of the various paths H5N1 could go down. “We’re giving this virus a lot of tickets.”
