Dr Charles Levinson leans back in his chair. It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing as scaremongering: experts warning that we could be sleepwalking into a new pandemic after an 11-year-old Cambodian girl and a 56-year-old Chinese woman died with avian influenza — more commonly known as bird flu — earlier this year.
Even more worrying is the news that the same strain of bird flu has now made it onto UK shores, with two poultry workers this week becoming the fourth and fifth Brits to become infected with the H5N1 strain since the latest outbreak took off in October 2021.
