When Victorian health officials confirmed Australia's first human case of avian influenza last week, there were a few key details that struck some of those listening as odd.on the same day that the state's agriculture department reported an outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm near Meredith. But the Department of Health made clear that the two incidents were totally unrelated.
"What we worry about is those avian viruses mutating to pick up an adaptation to the human respiratory tract. That's how a human pandemic would emerge," Professor MacIntyre said. Professor MacIntyre, who leads the global biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute at University of New South Wales, says this is due to the way this virus operates.
Professor MacIntyre says the statistical probability of the virus adapting to infect humans more efficiently is highest with the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b. If this kind of mutation were to occur, she suspects it would be in Europe or the Americas. " mutations, as well as reassortment with human or swine viruses. The fact that it's infecting mammalian species — that's one of the major hurdles a flu virus has to clear for efficient human transmission. There's been some mild mammalian adaptation here and there, but not enough to change the public health threat," he said.
Professor Lee says the varied approaches to restrictions on cross-border travel and trade around the world set up a "chaotic" dynamic."When you have an uncoordinated introduction of policies, where every country did things differently and would change them over time … it's nothing short of chaotic," she said. "It's costly, but it's also not a good way of managing risk.
"So these types of things are constraining the ability to do more widespread testing, to get more important public health information out, at least to the farm workers where we think this risk is really high." "The biggest thing that can be done is financial compensation for farmers. Without that, there's not going to as much testing and reporting as there should be, and outbreaks won't be disclosed," she said.Dr Adalja is similarly focused on managing the outbreaks in livestock industries well. He says a lack of trust in public health officials is a fundamental issue to solve for efficient and thorough testing and surveillance.