Washington: The World Health Organization has expressed concern over the unusually high death rate due to the H5N1 virus, or bird flu.
“This remains a major concern,” Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the UN health agency, told reporters. He was speaking to reporters in Geneva on Thursday. The mutated H5N1 virus is dangerous and can cause unusually high mortality. Earlier, scientists had said that if there is a small failure in handling the virus, it can spread all over the world and become a pandemic.
Bird flu that started in 2020 has caused the death of millions of chickens. It also affected wild birds, land mammals and marine mammals. Now the virus is developing the ability to spread rapidly from person to person, Jeremy Farrar said. According to the World Health Organization, 889 human cases were reported in 23 countries from the beginning of 2023 to April 1 of this year. As a result, 463 deaths occurred.
Earlier this month, it was reported that H5N1 was detected in a farm worker in Michigan, USA. This is only the second case where a human has tested positive for bird flu in the country. The incident follows an outbreak of the virus in a herd of wild birds in Texas, Kansas and other states that had contact with them. Often there are no obvious symptoms. Common symptoms include fever, cough, body aches, pneumonia, difficulty breathing, red eyes, sore throat, nausea, and vomiting. The H5N1 virus has a mortality rate of over 52 percent.
