The group of scientists, regulators and vaccine manufacturers meets twice a year to decide which strain of seasonal flu to include in the vaccine for the upcoming winter season, in this case for the Northern Hemisphere.
But it is also a chance to discuss the risk of animal viruses spilling over to humans and causing a pandemic. At this week’s meeting, H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b was a key topic, the World Health Organization (WHO) and global flu experts told Reuters. News agency.
“We are more prepared (than for COVID), but even if we are more prepared, we are not yet prepared enough,” Sylvie Briand, WHO director of global infectious hazard preparedness, said ahead of the meeting. “We need to really continue the efforts for a flu pandemic.”
Experts have been tracking H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b since it emerged in 2020, but recent reports of mass deaths in infected mammals from seals to bears, as well as potential mammal-to-mammal transmission on a Spanish mink farm last year, have raised concern.
However, there have been very few human cases, and the WHO currently assesses the threat to humans as low.
“This is a natural experiment playing out in front of us, and I don’t think we are complacent,” said Nicola Lewis, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Influenza at the Crick Institute in London. Speaking before the meeting, she said it would include assessments of the situation worldwide.
Experts also discussed potential vaccine development.
WHO-affiliated labs already hold two flu virus strains that are closely related to the circulating H5N1 virus, which could be used by vaccine manufacturers to create a human vaccine if needed.
Labs around the world are currently testing how closely both subtypes match the strain spreading among animals to determine whether any more updates are necessary.
