Israel is struggling to contain a large-scale bird flu outbreak as the disease has conquered new ground in recent months. Now, Israeli health officials are warning that the virus might infect humans – without even mutating.
“The widespread nature of the avian flu is very concerning, especially given that it is infecting chickens and not just wild birds,” the head of Israel’s National Council for Community Health, professor Amnon Lahad, told the Times of Israel on Wednesday. The professor warned that the virus had already made “the move from wildlife to stock animals,” and said he was only hoping it would not take the next step “to humans.”
The grim warning came a day before the disease spread to another Israeli farm, infecting some 5,500 birds, prompting the Agriculture Ministry to place the facility on lockdown and suspend its egg sales.
The outbreak started around two months ago, when the first signs of the disease were noted at various farms in Israel’s north.
It also hit the Hula Nature Reserve, where it killed thousands of cranes and other wild birds in what the minister of environmental protection, Tamar Zandberg, described as “one of the worst blows to wildlife in Israel’s history.”
Identified as the highly pathogenic H5N1 type of the virus, capable of infecting both birds and humans and having a fatality rate of over 50%, the avian flu has already led to 600,000 domestic fowl in Israel dying this month from either the disease or being culled.
“We’re managing a complex and evolving situation that requires many responses,” Agriculture Minister Oded Forer said on Thursday. “I have instructed our professional teams to continue taking action by all available means.” The ministry also said that it was concerned about the virus potentially infecting humans, adding that its veterinarians had been working “according to emergency procedures.”
According to Lahad, the virus could jump to humans following a mutation, but it can also possibly do that even without one. It could be “transmitted through contact with sick birds,” he said, adding that it might occur through “the same method we know from Covid, namely droplets passing into the respiratory system.”
No cases of human infection from H5N1 have been reported by Israel to date.