France’s Institut Pasteur has warned that the ongoing spread of bird flu among birds and mammals could become far more dangerous if the virus evolves to spread between humans.
According to Reuters, Marie-Anne Rameix-Welti, medical director at the institute’s respiratory infections centre said that the H5 strain of avian influenza poses a serious threat if it adapts to human-to-human transmission.
“What we fear is the virus adapting to mammals, and particularly to humans, becoming capable of human-to-human transmission, and that virus would be a pandemic virus,” she said.
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Bird flu has already forced the culling of hundreds of millions of birds worldwide in recent years, disrupting food supplies and driving prices higher.
Human cases remain rare, but experts say the current strain circulating in wild birds, poultry and even dairy cows in the United States is concerning.
Rameix-Welti explained that people have no antibodies against H5 bird flu, similar to the lack of immunity at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
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She added that flu viruses can also severely affect healthy people, including children, making the potential impact even more worrying.
“A bird flu pandemic would probably be quite severe, potentially even more severe than the pandemic we experienced,” she said.
According to the World Health Organization, nearly 1,000 human infections from various H5 strains have been recorded between 2003 and 2025, mainly in Egypt, Indonesia and Vietnam, with a fatality rate of around 48%.
The United States recently reported its first-ever human case of H5N5 in Washington state.
The patient, who had underlying health issues, later died.
Despite these warnings, global experts say the overall risk of a human pandemic is still low.
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“We need to be prepared to respond early enough. But for the time being, you can happily walk in the forest, eat chicken and eggs and enjoy your life. The pandemic risk is a possibility. But in terms of probability, it’s still very low,” said Gregorio Torres of the World Organisation for Animal Health.
Rameix-Welti noted that the world is now better prepared than it was before COVID-19.
Vaccine candidates for flu already exist, and global systems are in place to produce doses quickly.
“The positive point with flu, compared to COVID, is we have specific preventative measures in place. We have vaccine candidates ready and know how to manufacture a vaccine quickly,” she said.
“We also have stocks of specific antivirals, that, in principle, would be effective against this avian influenza virus,” she concluded.
