New symptoms of avian flu. A breeder in Texas presented a redness in the eyesi after contracting the virus H5N1. Why is WHO so worried about this case and how dangerous this disease is.
The case of the US farmer: the eye symptom
In recent days, a case of avian influenza caused by the virus has been identified H5N1 in a farmer in the USA, in Texas. According to doctors, he contracted the pathogen from one of his cows.
Bird flu in fact, even if it is more common in birds, it can pass to many other animals, mammals and humans included. However, it has difficulty transmitting between mammals of the same species, while it is much more contagious for birds.
Researchers take a sample from a bird to look for H5N1
The worrying factor for the WHO is that the only symptom the Texas farmer had was a slight redness in his eyes, in fact simple conjunctivitis, but he was otherwise healthy. Avian flu mortality from H5N1 it is normally 50% and the disease is very aggressive.
Why the WHO fears the H5N1 virus
The reason why the WHO fears a patient healthy carrier of H5N1 more than a patient seriusly sick is that the former has a much greater potential for meeting other people than the latter.
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By coming into contact with other people and talking to each other even just a few meters away, the virus risks transferring from one person to another. At the moment H5N1 it is not able to survive this passage, but the WHO’s concern is that it could in the future.
Viruses reproduce very quickly and for this reason their characteristics change very quickly. The more healthy H5N1 carriers there are, the more likely it is that an individual with one random mutation is able to survive human-to-human contagion.
The next Disease
This could create what is called in epidemiology Disease. It is a term that identifies an epidemic of a new disease, never recorded before or for which there are no vaccines or treatments.
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Avian influenza viruses are those that have the greatest possibility of generating a disease of this type, given the enormous quantity of birds in contact with humans in the avianIntensive poultry farming.
Some experts believe that the COVID-19 can be considered the first Disease X in history, having been at the center of a pandemic that spread while the pathogen was still relatively unknown.
Photo source: Ansa
