Bird Flu Pandemic Threat: Experts Warn of Potentially Worse-Than-COVID Risk
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
The United Kingdom is battling what one expert describes as a potentially record-breaking bird flu outbreak, forcing immediate and drastic measures across the country’s poultry industry. Professor Ian Brown, formerly the government’s top expert in avian virology, has warned farmers to "prepare for the worst" as the H5N1 virus currently infecting farm flocks could be the most infectious yet observed.
The highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 has already resulted in 26 confirmed cases on UK farms this season, 22 of which are in England. The severity of the virus, described as "as super-infectious as any" high pathogenicity avian influenza ever seen, has prompted authorities to enforce a mandatory housing order in England.
This move requires poultry, including flocks like the 32,000 free-range hens on Sarah Godwin’s Wiltshire farm, to be kept inside around the clock. Mrs. Godwin expressed deep distress over housing her hens but acknowledged it was a "necessary evil" due to the "disastrous" consequences of an outbreak, noting that literally grammes of contaminated muck could infect the entire flock, leading to a mandatory cull.
UK Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss urged all bird keepers to comply with the new housing measures and exercise "robust biosecurity measures," believing housing the birds will help "bring the rates of infection down".
While the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) maintains the risk to the general public’s health remains "very low," and properly-cooked poultry and eggs are safe to consume, global experts are focused on the virus’s potential to mutate. Professor Brown stressed that the virus, while currently a "bird virus," must be continually monitored because influenza viruses change, sometimes "spew[ing] out a variant that might be more infectious for humans".
This mutation concern is amplified by warnings from France’s Institut Pasteur. Marie-Anne Rameix-Welti, medical director at the Institut Pasteur’s respiratory infections centre, stated that if the bird flu virus adapts to mammals and gains the capacity for human-to-human transmission, it could trigger a pandemic worse than COVID-19.
Rameix-Welti highlighted that people possess no antibodies against the H5 bird flu, similar to the situation prior to COVID-19. Moreover, unlike COVID-19, which primarily affected vulnerable populations, flu viruses are capable of killing otherwise healthy individuals, including children. Historically, nearly 1,000 human outbreaks of H5 bird flu were recorded between 2003 and 2025, primarily in Egypt, Indonesia, and Vietnam, with a fatality rate of 48%.
However, the risk of a full-scale human pandemic developing remains low, according to Gregorio Torres, head of the Science Department at the World Organisation for Animal Health. Torres advised the public that they "can happily walk in the forest, eat chicken and eggs and enjoy your life". He noted that while the world needs to be prepared, the risk is currently "a possibility" but "still very low" in terms of probability.
Rameix-Welti also provided a measure of reassurance, noting that compared to the preparation level before COVID-19, the world is now better equipped, possessing specific preventative measures, including readily available vaccine candidates and stocks of specific antivirals.
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Keywords: Bird flu
Bird flu
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