“The country’s epidemiological shield has worked”: a new strain of bird flu in humans has been discovered in Russia

The head of Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, announced another "victory for Russian scientists" on Saturday. They were the first in the world to discover a new strain of bird flu in humans. The virus is still not transmitted from person to person, but the Novosibirsk "Vector" has already announced that it is ready to develop a vaccine.

the top news in the world media on Saturday The head of Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, hit , announcing that in Russia - for the first time in the world - cases of human infection with H5N8 avian influenza were detected. “The epidemiological shield of the country has worked,” Popova said, calling the fact of laboratory confirmation of the disease in humans an “important scientific discovery” and a “victory for Russian scientists” from the Vector Center in Novosibirsk.

According to her, seven employees of a poultry farm in southern Russia, where an outbreak of infection occurred in December 2020, became infected with bird flu. All patients had a mild course of the disease.

As with other strains of avian flu, human-to-human transmission has not been documented, but “time will tell how quickly subsequent mutations will allow it to overcome this barrier,” Popova said.

Virologists interviewed by RBC believe that the scientific value of the discovery and the risks of interspecific transmission are low. But the director of Vector, Rinat Maksyutov, immediately after Popova’s announcement , said that the center was ready to start developing test systems and a vaccine against the new virus even now.

Since 2003, 862 cases of human infection with another strain of avian influenza (H5N1) and 455 deaths from it in 17 countries have been laboratory confirmed in the world, recalls Bloomberg. Six out of 14 cases of infection with this virus, registered since 2014, have been fatal.

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