In response to the recent spread of highly pathogenic bird flu, US health authorities have decided to fund the acceleration of vaccine development.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a $176 million aid to Moderna to develop the bird flu vaccine. This is in response to the increasing number of human infection cases after the virus was detected in dairy cattle.
The US had the first outbreak of dairy cattle in over 12 states, and three people who had contact with the cattle were infected. The virus found in the US is H5N1, but recently, a variant H5N2 virus has also been found. Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a case where a man died from the H5N2 virus.
According to the WHO, from early 2003 to early April, there have been 889 human cases of bird flu in 23 countries. Among them, 463 people died, resulting in a fatality rate of 52%. Former CDC director Robert Redfield said that when bird flu is transmitted to humans, the mortality rate is “probably somewhere between 25 and 50% mortality” compared to COVID-19. He also expressed concern that it is “only a matter of time” before the bird flu becomes a pandemic.
However, US health authorities do not consider the bird flu risk as high. Moderna has already developed a bird flu vaccine and is in the early stages of testing using the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology used in the COVID-19 vaccine. The funds supplied by US health authorities will be used to continue developing the vaccine, including late-stage clinical trials next year.
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