A pair of vaccines are ready to ship within weeks if the bird flu — which has been found circulating in dairy cows in nine states — jumps to humans, say US health officials.
There’s no evidence that H5N1 has been spreading between people, though one dairy worker in Texas did become infected after working closely with cattle.
Health officials said during a briefing Wednesday that they were prepared for the possibility of human-to-human transmission of the bird flu.
At least 46 dairy cow herds in nine states have been infected, which has caused some concern that the virus could mutate and begin jumping to humans, NBC News reports.
Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said that studies “suggest that the vaccines will offer good cross-protection against cattle outbreak viruses” during the briefing.
The Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary for preparedness, Dawn O’Connell, told NBC News that there are hundreds of thousands of prefilled vaccine syringes ready to ship in the event of a transmission event.
“We’ve been investing in a library of antigens to move out as quickly as possible should we begin to see a highly transmissible flu strain circulate,” she said.
independent.co.uk
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