Bird flu virus in girl who died had mutations making it better adapted to humans

https://news.sky.com/story/bird-flu-victim-had-virus-with-mutations-that-made-it-better-adapted-to-human-cells-12822936

by amichail • 3 years ago

3 2 3 years ago

news.sky.com

aquarium87• 3 years ago

This headline is brought to you by brand new on site in less than 24 hours genetic sequencing.

More interesting to me is how often, when tested, does this happen?

hadlock• 3 years ago

The CDC and WHO track any outbreak worldwide where a group of people mysteriously get sick in a very short period of time. CDC website is full of epidemics where a village in Nairobi or rural Vietnam get some hantavirus via a hampster or whatever but usually fizzles out because they all handled the hampster but it wasn't very efficient at human-to-human transfer. Sometime in 2021 there was a canine coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia/Malaysia area with humans and that was rapidly sequenced as well. Lots of epidemiologists working in the background constantly. We caught and sequenced covid early too, both Russia and MRNA had functional vaccines ready (but untested) within weeks of sequencing. CDC website is encyclopedic about past outbreaks and information about how and why they respond.

After food and housing security, disease prevention is a top item for governments to tackle as it's critical to the economic output and business interests so it's been well funded for over a decade. Even smaller less developed countries like Colombia are building new vaccine factories now to keep up with demand.

Bird flu virus in girl who died had mutations making it better adapted to humans

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