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Bird flu has swooped into 108 countries across five continents, according to the UN health agency.
Outbreaks of the virus, officially known as H5N1, are a yearly occurrence. But this year, it has infected not only hundreds of millions of poultry but also some 900 herds of dairy cows in at least 16 US states. It’s also affected several species of wild animals that ate infected birds.
Aside from the resulting threat to food security, the most worrying aspect is that approximately 60 cases of human avian flu have been reported in the United States among people who had direct contact with infected birds.
While human cases were not unheard of in previous years, they were quite rare.
This is leading to worries that H5N1 could cause the next pandemic — especially because the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that kicked off the Covid-19 pandemic also is believed to have jumped from animals to humans.
We asked an Israeli expert whether there’s real reason for concern.
The current avian influenza spread “is alarming, but we do not believe it will be next pandemic,” says Prof. Cyrille Cohen, dean of Bar-Ilan University’s Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and head of its immunotherapy lab.
“We know that the strain is able to infect mammalians including humans, and throughout this year we’ve seen about 60 cases in nine states. It’s alarming that we just saw a severe human case in Louisiana, because usually it just causes fever and conjunctivitis. This severe case may point toward a change in the behavior of the virus,” Cohen continues.
“But it’s not like Covid, because there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission of avian influenza. It’s only when you are in contact with infected animals that you may get sick,” Cohen explains.
Indeed, UN health officials have found “no evidence so far that the H5N1 viruses have adapted to spread between people.”
“That being said,” Cohen cautions, “we need to be on the lookout for possible changes in the behavior of the virus — like a person coinfected with a human strain of flu and avian flu may develop a variant that could propagate in the population. But that’s a bit farfetched.”
He also emphasizes that bird flu is very different than Covid.
“In Covid, a lot of patients were asymptomatic so they could spread the virus quite freely. With avian flu, you feel sick and will stay home and infect fewer people,” he says.
And so, Cohen assures us, “We are not talking about a pandemic.”
In Israel, there’s another reason for optimism: This season’s bird flu is nowhere near as serious as the outbreak in 2022 during peak bird migration season.
At that time, tens of thousands of migratory common cranes arrived from Europe and western Asia already infected with the flu. More than 5,000 crane carcasses were collected at Agamon Hula Lake Nature Park in the Upper Galilee.
The virus then spread to egg and turkey farms, prompting the Israel Ministry of Agriculture’s Veterinary Service to declare a state of emergency. Half a million laying hens and 90,000 turkeys were destroyed to stop the spread.
Fortunately, that situation is not repeating itself.
“There are very few cases this year,” says Prof. Israel Rozenboim, vice dean for research and development at Hebrew University’s Faculty of Agriculture and a specialist in avian physiology, reproduction and management.
“Compared to what’s going on in the US, where it’s a big catastrophe because it’s going to dairy cows, in Israel we haven’t yet seen a lot of cases in live birds — just here and there,” Rozenboim tells ISRAEL21c.
He says that while many countries are starting to vaccinate all poultry against avian influenza – including nearby Egypt, where the virus remains endemic — Israel is not vaccinating poultry flocks but rather destroying flocks in which birds test positive for the virus.
“The virus is not eliminated after you vaccinate,” he points out. “The thinking here is that by eradicating flocks, you eliminate the virus.”
Rozenboim also sees a possible connection between Israel’s year-long war with Hezbollah and the low incidence of bird flu in northern poultry farms, which were severely affected by the outbreak in 2022.
“Two years ago, the problem was in Agamon Hula, a small lake where the wild cranes arrived contaminated and were being fed. They stayed put and infected all the flocks around the Hula,” he says.
“Today, because of the war, people have not gone to the Hula to feed the animals.”
And then he mentions that it’s a huge relief not to have to worry about bird flu in Israel at this time.
“Right now, we have other concerns,” he says wryly, understating the obvious.
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