by Mansur Shaheen, Daily Mail:
The White House is considering rolling out vaccines for chickens in the US
Some industry leaders oppose the rollout of the shots as it introduces hurdles
The White House is contemplating a mass bird flu vaccine rollout for America’s chickens amid a record outbreak, according to reports.
Around 60million birds in the US and 200million globally have been culled to prevent the spread of the H5N1 strain in the past year, driving up the prices of chickens and eggs since early 2022.
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There are fears the virus could jump to humans if it acquires dangerous mutations while infection rates are sky-high, with the virus already detected in other mammals such as minks, sea lions and foxes.
White House officials told the New York Times that President Joe Biden is open to the idea of an avian flu vaccine rollout for the nation’s birds. It’s unclear how many birds would be targeted – with around 10billion chickens alone produced in America each year solely for meat.
The White House is considering a vaccine rollout for the nation’s chicken population, hoping to jab the billions of birds produced in the US every year in order to curb the spread of the H5N1 bird flu
Last month, a young girl in Prey Veng, Cambodia, died of the bird flu. Her infection was not from the same strain circulating around much of the world but it did raise alarms for many global health officials
Fears about the bird flu outbreak reached an apex last month, when an 11-year-old girl in Cambodia died from the avian flu and her father also tested positive.
Both were found to have an older clade of H5N1 which was not responsible for the current global outbreak and they were both believed to have been infected by a bird.
But the cases highlight the danger of a zoonotic spillover.
Vaccinating the tens of millions of domesticated poultry in the US could take years, though, and opens other concerns.
The rollout could impact trade and even make it harder to determine which birds have been infected, experts fear.
The USDA did not disclose details about the shots it would use in testing, though there are a few in development.
At the Pirbright Institute in the UK, scientists are developing an improved shot that involves tagging flu virus proteins with a marker that makes them easier for antigen-presenting cells (APCs) to capture.
This generates faster and stronger immune responses to the bird flu strain compared to the inactivated virus vaccine that is the current standard.
