The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called on its four global vaccine laboratories to develop a human vaccine for the specific strain of avian flu that is rife across the world, i can reveal.
Labs in Australia, Japan, the UK and US are working together to produce a working vaccine 2.3.4.4b strain of the H5N1 virus as concerns grow that it could mutate to become easily transmissible to people and cause a second global pandemic in three years.
While the WHO and the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) do not believe there is a high risk of avian flu mutating to become an airborne virus capable of infecting humans and allowing person-to-person infection, concern remains high due to the high death rate from the virus.
Official figures from the WHO state that 60 per cent of the 868 people infected with avian flu over the past 20 years have died.
UK scientists have tested a human vaccine for bird flu in the event that the deadly virus mutates to infect people on a mass scale, but while it has shown signs of success it would not be a jab specific to the current 2.3.4.4b strain.
The MHRA is a member of one of four international WHO Essential Regulatory Laboratories, namely the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS).
The GISRS continuously monitors influenza viruses that are a risk to public health. In addition to human season influenza, this includes cases of zoonotic influenza virus infections and outbreaks of avian and other animal influenza viruses.
As part of GISRS’s preparedness plans, candidate vaccine viruses (CVVs) are developed against viruses that might pose a public health risk.
These CVVs can be used by vaccine manufacturers to develop and produce influenza vaccines.
An MHRA source said: “While CVVs related to the avian influenza viruses currently circulating in the UK are available, we are working to produce even better-matched CVVs.”
The current outbreak of avian flu has already led to the culling of almost four million birds such as chickens, ducks and turkeys in the UK and almost 100 million birds worldwide.
It is also understood that the UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) has confirmed cases of bird flu being transmitted to wild mammals, including foxes and sea life such as seals and dolphins in and around the UK, as well as across Europe and in the US.
Last week i revealed that the Government’s bird flu FluMap taskforce was concerned over mutations to the current strain of the virus due to initial evidence suggesting it may be more stable than previous strains.
Professor Wendy Barclay, who is a member of FluMap, believes its “a roll of the dice” on whether or not the virus mutates to infect humans more easily.
She said: “We are monitoring for signs of the virus mutating and potentially becoming airborne. That’s how pandemics happen.
“One of the things that FluMap is checking out is whether or not this virus is a little bit more stable than previous ones, and that might be why it has been hanging around since the summer and more than we’ve seen before.”
While any mutations that allow airborne transmission of the virus to humans is expected to reduce the potency of the virus, it is likely that it remains considerably higher than the 2 per cent fatality rate that Covid-19 caused at its peak in 2020.
Professor Barclay, who is also head of department of infectious disease at Imperial College London, added: “If the virus underwent the mutations it needs to become transmissible to humans, then that 60 per cent fatality rate might go down because there is a balance with viruses where, in order to become transmissible, they have to change their nature and usually that means the fatality rate goes down, but it doesn’t always.”
