The brand new cases and one fatality from bird flu documented in Cambodia recently are causing many to fret a few potential pandemic following the COVID-19 global health crisis. But experts will not be apprehensive. As an alternative, they anticipate the worst-case scenario and prepare for it ahead. 

U.K. health experts revealed via the BBC this week the steps they’ve been taking to forestall the worst thing that would occur from the continued avian flu outbreak. The U.K. Health Security Agency is already working on models to predict what number of are prone to get infected or sick from the virus. 

Health authorities are also evaluating whether lateral flow tests or blood tests could be helpful. As well as, after observing what happened in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, they at the moment are studying genetic mutations that would make the virus more dangerous to human health. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, no suitable vaccines were available to fight the novel coronavirus. Scientists needed to rush developing vaccines for the disease. For bird flu, health experts have already got several good candidates which may assist in case one other pandemic happens. 

One expert told the BBC that they’re preparing “for the worst” at this point even when the human transmission is rare or unlikely. To this point, cases of humans getting sick from avian influenza were attributable to direct contact with infected birds. There’s still no trace of human-to-human transmission. 

On Thursday, an 11-year-old girl from Cambodia reportedly died from a bird flu infection about per week after contracting the virus. Local health authorities have warned residents against touching dead and sick birds near the girl’s residence. 

The girl was the country’s first known human H5N1 infection since 2014. Cambodia had 56 cases of human infection from 2003 to 2014, and 37 of them were fatal. The country is currently monitoring a couple of infections, including the girl’s father. 

Historically, the bird flu virus has infected a whole bunch of individuals across the globe. In accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO), a complete of 240 cases had been recorded since January 2003; 135 were fatal, suggesting a 56% case fatality rate. 

Based on its track record, the virus isn’t superb at infecting people. It’s incapable of binding to cells in human respiratory tracts very effectively, in accordance with Treana Mayer, a postdoctoral fellow in microbiology at Colorado State University. But this doesn’t mean we must always be complacent. 

The virus could have a low risk to most people at present, but energetic monitoring is a must to detect the primary signs of a viral spillover from animals to humans and stop what might be a big outbreak, like what happened to Covid. Mayer urged policymakers to take steps comparable to preserving nature, keeping wildlife separate from livestock and improving early detection of rare infections from animals.