Five years after the outbreak of his pandemic coronaviruswhich shocked the whole planet, the head of the center of respiratory infections of the Pasteur Institute, reveals a new scary scenario, this time with her virus “starring” bird flu.
With bird flu spreading among wild birds, poultry and mammals, the Pasteur institute says it could lead to a pandemic worse than the coronavirus if the virus mutates so it can be transmitted from person to person.
Bird flu has led to the slaughter of hundreds of millions of birds in recent years, disrupting food supplies and driving up prices, although human infections remain rare.
“What we fear is does the virus adapt to mammals and especially to humans and thus becomes capable of transmission from person to person and perhaps the virus it will be a pandemic virusMarie-Anne Rame Velti, medical director of the Pasteur Institute’s center for respiratory infections, told the Reuters news agency.
The Institut Pasteur was among the first European laboratories to develop and share a test to detect COVID-19, making the protocols available to the World Health Organization and laboratories around the world.
Humans have antibodies against the common H1 and H3 seasonal flu, but not the H5 avian flu that infects birds and mammals, just as they did not against COVID-19, he said.
And, unlike with COVID-19, which mainly affects vulnerable groups of people, flu viruses can also kill healthy people, including childrensaid Ramey-Velti.
“A bird flu pandemic would likely be quite severe, possibly even more severe than the pandemic we experienced,” she said from her laboratory in Paris.
The disturbing facts
There have been many cases of humans becoming infected with H5 bird flu viruses in the past, including H5N1 currently circulating among poultry and dairy cows in the US, but these were usually in close contact with infected animals. A first-ever human case of H5N5 was reported in the US state of Washington this month. The man, who had underlying illnesses, died last week.
In its most recent bird flu report, the World Health Organization said there have been nearly 1,000 outbreaks in humans between 2003 and 2025 — mostly in Egypt, Indonesia and Vietnam, 48 percent of which died.
However, the risk of a human pandemic developing remains low, Gregorio Torres, head of the World Organization for Animal Health’s Science Department, told Reuters.
“We have to prepare to respond in a timely manner. But for now you can comfortably walk in the woods, eat chicken and eggs and enjoy life. The risk of a pandemic is a possibility. But as a possibility, it is still very low,” he said.
Ramey-Velti also said that in the event that bird flu could mutate so that it could be transmitted from human to human, the world today is better prepared than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The good thing about flu, compared to COVID, is that we have specific preventative measures in place. We have vaccine candidates ready and we know how to quickly make a vaccine,” he said.
“We also have stocks of specific antivirals that, in principle, will be effective against this bird flu virus,” he added.