A bird flu pandemic with the potential to be “100 times worse than COVID” may be on the horizon after a rare human case was discovered in Texas, experts have warned.
The H5N1 avian flu has spread rapidly since a new strain was detected in 2020, affecting wild birds in every state, as well as in commercial poultry and backyard flocks.
But it has now even been detected in mammals, with cattle herds across four states becoming infected, and on Monday federal health officials announced that a dairy worker in Texas caught the virus.
“This virus [has been] on the top of the pandemic list for many, many years and probably decades,” Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, a bird flu researcher from Pittsburgh, said at a recent panel discussing the issue, according to the Daily Mail.
“And now we’re getting dangerously close to this virus potentially causing a pandemic.”
He noted that the H5N1 virus has already been detected in species throughout the world and “has shown the ability to infect a range of mammalian hosts, including humans.”
“So therefore, in my view, I think this is a virus that has the greatest pandemic threat [that is] playing out in plain sight and globally present,” Kuchipudi said.
