The H5N1 virus has been devastating bird populations, and is now infecting mammals too. Is human-to-human transmission next? And are we ready for another pandemic.

Over the past four years, a silent pandemic has been raging. One in which the death toll is believed to number in the hundreds of millions, but which has received remarkably little attention until now.

The pandemic in question is bird flu, the H5N1 strain of influenza, which since 2020 has moved far beyond the avian world and into mammals ranging from dairy cattle to domestic pets, and species that live on our doorsteps, such as foxes. The virus’s presence has been detected on every continent, even Antarctica. While it has yet to evolve the capability of spreading between humans, alarm bells were raised last month after a dairy farm worker in Texas contracted H5N1, seemingly from cattle.

It would appear to be the first known case of bird flu jumping to humans from another mammal. “There is increasing concern at the scientific and public health levels,” says Dr Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s vaccine research group, who has previously compared the rising infection rates among animals to “the rumbles prior to an earthquake”.

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