“It risks being the next pandemic” –

Avian flu should not be underestimated at all. This is the opinion, entrusted to Adnkronos, of Matteo Bassetti, director of infectious diseases at the San Martino polyclinic hospital in Genoa, who comments on the news on the virus that has emerged in recent days as follows: “In the USA the problem of detection also in bovine milk H5N1 influenza virus is important. The fact that the WHO and the FAO highlight the need to raise attention on avian flu and on the consumption of raw milk demonstrates that we are faced with a different phenomenon from that seen 25 years ago, with the first cases in birds. Today the H5N1 avian flu is no longer a problem for that species, we should perhaps stop calling it avian flu because today it affects cattle on farms and is getting dangerously close to humans. Saying that raw milk should not be consumed, at least in the US, means that there may be a potential risk that H5N1 will become the next pandemic problem.”

Bassetti, who is in Barcelona where he will speak at the Escmid Global Congress which brings together the major clinical microbiologists and infectious disease specialists, focused in particular on the preliminary assessment of the risk associated with the pathogen – “low but it evolves together with the virus” – made by the Organization World Health Organization (WHO) together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Woah (World Organization for Animal Health). After Covid, is there now a new enemy at the gates?