Vogelgrippe – eine verheerende Pandemie für Vögel und eine Bedrohung für die globale Gesundheit?

„I think the wild bird component of this is really the key – it's a wild birds and poultry panzootic. But it's the change in the epidemiology of this virus, the adaptation to wild birds and the impact it has on a lot of different wild bird populations and biodiversity that for me is something really serious.“

„And then the second part is that with increased numbers of individuals and increased circulation the opportunity for the virus increases to adapt to a lot of different situations increases and species. The risk is the many opportunities the virus gets through this really widespread and wide circulation. Now not only the viruses adapted more to wild birds and it has gathered force in violence and in spread between wild birds but it's also able to persist longer. We have outbreaks in summer even in regions, such as the Iberian Peninsula, where we've actually had very, very sporadic outbreaks, because of UV light and very high temperatures. And now we're seeing outbreaks in August in Spain, which is something really, really unprecedented. And this shows that this virus is changing in many ways that we don't have a handle on. And this is what I would like to stress.“

„I would like to stress the expansion of the virus’ and it’s ability to infect other host populations. On several occasions now we see the extent of wild birds that take the virus into places, nations and ecosystems that he's not been in before. That increases its exposure to other populations. So that’s a whole new dynamic, transforming and evolving quite fast on a global scale. And as its gets into those places, have we got good surveillance systems that are globally set up to track and monitor those concerning events fast? It is again about global responsiveness here and working together globally to make sure that we can track this virus very fast and understand what it's doing next. So, I think that's my biggest concern, have we got that global structure to ensure that we're communicating? Have we learned all the lessons from COVID?“

„The major point is still that it is a global panzootic in birds and it's reaching more areas now. And this is a point which is also worrying me the most at the moment. It is reaching areas where this type of virus has never been seen. And we are talking about the whole continent South America with a lot of different bird species which never had contact to this kind of virus. We even don't know what kind of other influenza viruses have been there, how the whole population, the biosystem in South America will react. And there is also a lot of poultry farming in some of these countries. So, I think this is a new mixture we have to follow up very closely. Then, we really need to be aware that spill-over events can happen to non-bird species. And finally, the genetic variability, so that this virus is changing a lot even if it goes under the same public name: one H5N1 is not the same in all regions. This means it's a highly dynamic situation which we have to follow closely. Sequencing and surveillance monitoring is the measures we really need all over the globe. And this is a hurdle in some countries and we have to work on this to get this done even better in more countries. To be informed early enough if something crucial changes.“