In Poland, cats are suffering from bird flu on a larger scale. The first people have also become infected. The World Health Organization (WHO) is now calling for great vigilance.
Following the world’s first known outbreak of bird flu among cats in Poland, the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for great vigilance. Earlier this week she reported 29 confirmed cases of H5N1 infection among cats in different parts of Poland. The WHO asked all countries to ensure that possible human cases are detected early. The outbreak is another warning that the bird flu virus could trigger the next pandemic, said Wenqing Zhang, head of the WHO influenza program, in Geneva on Wednesday.
Bird flu: WHO calls for vaccine development
As it has been doing for months, the WHO has again called on companies and scientists to develop vaccine candidates so that a vaccine can be quickly available in the event of an outbreak of bird flu in humans.
The H5N1 virus has been spreading massively among wild birds for three years. It has also increasingly included various species of mammals. There have been isolated cases in cats, but Poland has now become the first country to report a major outbreak.
There are also isolated cases of bird flu infection in humans. But so far the virus has not changed in such a way that it can be transmitted from person to person. However, there is a risk of such mutations. Bird flu is life-threatening for humans.
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