eading vaccine manufacturers are bracing for the possibility that the H5N1 avian flu virus. Which has already kille or forced the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of animals worldwide, could mutate to infect humans and unleash a new pandemic.
Epidemiologists argue that the risk to humans is low, but after Covid-19, the spectre of another pandemic wiping out hundreds of millions of lives worldwide has accelerated scientific research.
While Sanofi already has a vaccine against the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b virus – which could serve as the basis for producing injections tailore to the currently circulating strain – companies GSK, Moderna and CSL Seqirus announced they have begun developing their own vaccines.
Vaccine manufacturers are already preparing for the “human bird flu pandemic”.
The executives told Reuters news agency that they are developing or are about to test “sample human vaccines that better match the circulating subtype, as a precaution against a future pandemic”.
Meanwhile, Sanofi, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, said they are “ready” to begin mass production of the vaccine if necessary, with existing H5N1 vaccine strains in stock.
Raffael Nachbagauer, Moderna’s chief executive of infectious diseases, told Politico that his company is beginning clinical studies for an avian influenza mRNA vaccine this year in the face of a possible pandemic.
Vaccine manufacturers are already preparing for the “human bird flu pandemic”.
Moderna said it expects to deliver a human vaccine “within two months of an actual pandemic outbreak”.
In the face of this, experts agree on the need to better organise vaccine distribution around the world while stocks are limite, according to Reuters.
We could have a much worse problem with vaccine hoarding and vaccine nationalism in a flu outbreak than we saw with Covid,” said Richard Hatchett, executive director of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which helps fund vaccine research.
The world has been living through one of the worst outbreaks of avian flu since 2021, infecting or killing more than 200 million birds worldwide and thousands of mammals, including minks in Spain, seals in the US, sea lions and fur seals in Peru and dolphins in the UK.