Cameron Mitchell Restaurant founder and CEO Cameron Mitchell reveals the disease's impact on produce prices in 'The Claman Countdown'.
Although a Candidate bird flu vaccine It is not yet commercially available, medical experts suggest that it should be available once.
Dr. Linda Yancey, an infectious disease and internal medicine specialist at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston, told Fox Business that the shot will be important in protecting people and those around them against highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). H5N1) virus, otherwise known as bird flu.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said, “The US government is developing vaccines against avian influenza A(H5N1) viruses as needed.”
According to the CDC, human infection with HPAI A (H5N1) virus is rare, but unprotected exposure to an infected animal or in an environment where there are infected birds or other infected animals increases the risk of infection.
Bird flu viruses in wild birds cause outbreaks in commercial poultry and backyard flocks, and have spread to wild and domestic mammals, according to the CDC. Since 1997, sporadic human infections have occurred in 23 countries, with mortality rates exceeding 50%. But only a few human cases have been reported since 2022. Most infections occur after close contact with sick or dead infected poultry or exposure to dairy cattle during ongoing H5N1 outbreaks.
U.S. egg production has fallen as prices rise along with bird flu
People at risk of bird flu – poultry workers, dairy and cattle farmers – are asked to wear protective clothing including N95 masks, gloves and eye protection to reduce the chance of exposure.
Earlier this week, concerns about the virus grew when A patient in Louisiana has died After the first human case of bird flu was hospitalized. Louisiana Department of Health officials confirmed that the patient contracted H5N1 after being exposed to a combination of a non-commercial backyard flock and wild birds. This marked the first bird flu-related death.
The virus is very worrisome, Yancey said, because it has a high mortality rate and has already spread from birds to mammals.
“We know that it's only a few mutations away from being able to spread from person to person, so we've gone ahead and started developing a vaccine,” Yancey said. He believes it's either “going to die out because we're actively monitoring it… or it's going to mutate, and it's going to spread and it's going to affect the population.”
Earlier this week, concern about the virus grew when a Louisiana patient died after being hospitalized in the first human case of bird flu. (Mary Kang/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
New York City-based emergency room doctor. Robert Glatter told Fox Business that people need to be “careful.”
“With avian influenza circulating in birds and other mammals, including dairy cattle and pigs, the possibility of a 'recombination event' raises the possibility of a genetic mutation that is extremely problematic,” he said.
A “recombination event” occurs when two different viruses swap genetic material, creating a new virus with a mixture of characteristics from both. This often happens with flu-like viruses and can lead to new strains.
The bird flu patient virus had mutations, raising concerns about human spread
Yancey said it won't be long before a new vaccine is developed.
“What we have to do is this new strain, which we do literally every flu season. Every flu season, we have a new flu vaccine for the strain that's circulating that season. So, what we have to do is the new strain,” he said. added
Freshly laid chicken eggs in baskets before being washed and packaged on a farm in Pleasureville, Kentucky. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
In July 2024, Moderna was awarded $176 million from the US government to develop an mRNA-based vaccine that could be used to treat bird flu in humans.
Glatter said the development of a bird flu vaccine is “essential at this time in light of the recent deaths” and that when it is approved, he believes patients at higher risk of adverse outcomes — those with lung and heart disease, chronic kidney disease — are at risk. , cancer patients and those with autoimmune conditions — should be the primary recipients. Later, it should be extended to low-risk patients, he said.
Egg prices are high and will continue until 2025
For now, the best way people can protect themselves is to get the seasonal flu vaccine. Seasonal influenza vaccination “reduces the chance of becoming infected with both avian and human flu viruses. It also reduces the chance of human flu strains spreading to animals such as pigs.”
This ultimately reduces the likelihood of a “rearrangement event”.