The warning has come again. Experts at Institut Pasteur in Paris say that the avian influenza strain commonly known as 'bird flu' in particular the highly pathogenic H5 virus, could ignite a pandemic even worse than COVID-19. While the risk remains low for now, the potential scale of damage is enough to demand global vigilance.
The primary source of concern lies in the fact that humans currently lack immunity to H5 bird flu strains. The H5 virus most often circulates among wild birds, poultry and various mammals. As explained by the head of the respiratory infections centre at Institut Pasteur, people have antibodies to regular seasonal flu strains (H1, H3), but not to H5 , in the same way there was no immunity to COVID-19 at the outset.
