Russia said on Saturday that scientists had detected the world’s first case of transmitting the H5N8 strain of bird flu from birds to humans and alerted the World Health Organization.
In a televised statement, the head of the Russian Rospotrebnadzor guard, Anna Popova, said that scientists from the Vektor laboratory isolated the genetic material of the strain from seven workers at a poultry farm in southern Russia, where an outbreak was recorded in December among birds.
The workers did not suffer any serious health consequences, she added. They are believed to have caught the poultry virus on the farm.
“Information about the world’s first case of transmitting bird flu (H5N8) to humans has already been sent to the World Health Organization,” Popova said.
There are different subtypes of bird flu viruses.
Although the highly contagious strain H5N8 is lethal to birds, it has never been reported to have spread to humans.
Popova praised the “important scientific discovery”, saying that “time will tell” if the virus can continue to move.
“The discovery of these mutations when the virus has not yet acquired the ability to transmit from human to human gives us, the whole world, time to prepare for possible mutations and to react in an appropriate and timely manner,” he said. said Popova.
The WHO confirmed on Saturday that it had been notified by Russia of the development.
“We are in talks with national authorities to gather more information and assess the impact of this event on public health,” a spokesman said.
“If confirmed, this would be the first time H5N8 has infected humans.”
The WHO stressed that Russian workers were “asymptomatic” and no human-to-human transmission was reported.
People can become infected with avian and swine flu viruses, such as the A (H5N1) and A (H7N9) bird flu subtypes and the swine flu subtypes, such as A (H1N1).
According to the WHO, humans usually become infected through direct contact with contaminated animals or environments and there is no sustained transmission among humans.
H5N1 in humans can cause serious illness and has a mortality rate of 60%.
‘The tip of the iceberg’
Gwenael Vourc’h, head of research at France’s National Institute of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, said it was known that influenza viruses were evolving “fairly quickly” and that there could have been other cases than those reported in Russia. .
“This is probably the tip of the iceberg,” she told AFP.
Francois Renaud, a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), said, however, that he was “not particularly concerned” at this stage.
He added that the coronavirus pandemic has taught countries to react quickly to potential health threats. “Draconian measures will be taken to stop the outbreak immediately,” he said.
Avian flu has broken out in several European countries, including France, where hundreds of thousands of birds have been slaughtered to stop the infection.
Russia’s Vektor Virology and Biotechnology Center, which has detected transmission to poultry workers, has also developed one of several coronavirus vaccines in the country.
In Soviet times, the laboratory, located in Koltsovo, outside the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, conducted secret research on biological weapons.
It still stores Ebola to smallpox viruses.
In televised remarks, Vektor chief Rinat Maksyutov said the laboratory was ready to begin developing test kits to help detect potential cases of H5N8 in humans and start working on a vaccine.
The Soviet Union was a scientific power, and Russia sought to claim leadership in vaccine research under President Vladimir Putin.
Russia registered the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in August, months before Western competitors and even before large-scale clinical trials.
After the initial skepticism in the West, Lancet This month’s newspaper published results showing that the Russian vaccine – named after the Soviet-era satellite – is safe and effective.
© Agence France-Presse