Mutated avian flu puts EU on alert; Varhely: “We are preparing for the threat”

Brussels – Will bird flu become the new COVID-19? A scenario one wants to rule out, but certainly the European Commission is uneasy. The mutated version of the H5N1 virus that has already been passed from animals to humans in the United States activates the EU executive and the relevant security agencies. “The Commission prepares for the threat represented by the H5N1 circulation viruses in mammals,” Health Commissioner Oliver Varhely acknowledges in his response to the parliamentary question asking how the EU intends to respond to the risk of a new pandemic.

Varhely starts with a premise that is a must: at present, the avian influenza virus circulating in the United States “has not been detected in humans or cattle in the EU.” However, this is not a reason to remain calm. On the contrary, the von der Leyen team has asked the Food Safety Authority (EFSA) at the European Union Reference Laboratory (EURL, i.e., the Istituto zooprofilattico sperimentale delle Venezie) to “assess the risk of infection of dairy cows in the EU with the virus circulating in the US to explore actions in animals.”

The Commission also asked the two bodies, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), to closely monitor the situation from an epidemiological point of view, and thus contagions, and disease evolution: mutations and variants.

If the European Union takes action, so must the states, and even more so. Varhely recalls that the EU program for avian influenza surveillance leaves it up to national authorities to monitor wild or farmed mammals when the epidemiological situation indicates that they could pose a health risk to animals and humans. The EU as a whole, therefore, is beginning to prepare for a worst that it wants to avoid, lest it repeat the 2015 crisis or the 2021 wave.