Reuters reported that "the highly contagious bird flu virus has led to the culling of hundreds of millions of birds in the past few years, disrupting food supplies and driving up white meat prices, although human infections remain rare."
Marie-Anne Ramix-Welte, medical director of the Respiratory Infections Center at the Pasteur Institute, confirmed: "What we fear is that the virus will adapt to mammals, especially humans, and become capable of human-to-human transmission, and that this virus will become an epidemic."
She noted that the Pasteur Institute was one of the first European laboratories to develop and share COVID-19 detection tests, making the protocols available to the World Health Organization and laboratories around the world.
The medical director of the respiratory infection center at the Pasteur Institute explained that "people have antibodies to the common seasonal avian influenza H1 and H3, but they do not have any antibodies to avian influenza H5, which affects birds and mammals, and they are not immune to antibodies for COVID-19."
She also stated that "the bird flu pandemic is likely to be extremely severe, perhaps even more severe than the one we experienced five years ago."
