A bird flu vaccine for cows has passed early testing, and the mRNA injection is showing promising results. This news comes as scientists lament that there have not been any new human cases in three months.
No Human Bird Flu Cases In 3 Months; Scientists Ask Why
This development of this new bovine injection could mark a crucial step towards creating flu vaccines for livestock and reducing the risk of animal-to-human transmission of a virus that poses a “real pandemic threat”, says Scott Hensley, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and a co-author of the work. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to say that the “threat” to humans is still very low. But we assumed at some point a “vaccine” would be introduced, either in humans or into the food supply. It looks like meat or dairy (since this is an injection for cows) will take the first hit.
Fears of a bird flu pandemic have been crumbling, but the media is claiming citizens should still be afraid.
Fears of a bird-flu pandemic have been rising since the first confirmed outbreak of the H5N1 avian influenza virus in dairy cattle was reported in March 2024. Since then, the virus has affected more than 1,000 dairy herds across 17 US states. Health officials have linked 64 human infections and one death to the outbreak. –Scientific American
This cattle vaccine does use mRNA technology. Hensley and his team built on more than a decade of work on seasonal bird-flu mRNA vaccines. The researchers took one such vaccine candidate and swapped out its viral haemagglutinin gene — which encodes a protein known to elicit an immune response — with the corresponding gene from the new H5N1 virus found on dairy farms. “It’s so easy to switch,” says Hensley. “That’s really the value of using mRNA-based vaccines.”
The media did admit that there are limitations to this study as well.
It only looked at vaccine responses in calves, but much of the avian-flu transmission on dairy farms occurs among lactating adult cattle, says virologist Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds in Memphis, Tennessee. Hensley and his team are already working on extra trials in lactating cows.
Bird Flu Vaccine Incoming
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