2023-07-17 18:50:29
LONDON — About 20 cats have been infected with bird flu across Poland, but no humans appear to have contracted it, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
In a statement on Monday, the UN health agency said it was the first time so many cats had been infected with bird flu over such a large geographical area in a single country.
The WHO said that late last month, Polish authorities notified agency officials of the unusual deaths of more than 45 cats in 13 geographic regions of the country. Last week’s tests revealed that 29 felines had H5N1.
In June, the most recent variant of H5N1 was reported in birds and other animal species in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Since 2020, according to the WHO, a dozen human cases have been reported.
Scientists fear that the rise in H5N1 cases, especially in animals that have frequent contact with humans, might lead to a mutated version of the disease that might spread easily between people, triggering another pandemic.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many experts suspected that the next global epidemic would be triggered by H5N1. But while bird flu has killed hundreds of millions of birds worldwide, it has sickened fewer than 900 people since 2003 and has not been able to spread easily among humans.
It is not yet known how domestic cats in Poland became infected with bird flu. Officials are still investigating possible sources of exposure, including contact with wild birds known to carry H5N1.
The UN agency said the risk of people in Poland becoming infected with bird flu was “low” and “low to moderate” for people exposed to cats, including cat owners and veterinarians.
Last week, the WHO and its partners warned that the increasing number of mammals infected with H5N1 was unusual. Experts have previously warned that pigs, which are susceptible to flu viruses from humans and birds, might act as a ‘mixing vessel’, leading to the emergence of mutated viruses that might be deadly to humans.
Since last year, authorities in ten countries have reported outbreaks of bird flu in mammals, including farmed mink in Spain, seals in the United States and sea lions in Peru and Chile.
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