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Russia said on Saturday that its scientists had detected the world’s first case of transmission of the H5N8 strain of bird flu from birds to humans and had alerted the WHO.
Anna Popova, head of Russia’s health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, said in televised statements that scientists from the Vektor lab had isolated the genetic material from the strain from seven workers at a poultry farm in southern Russia, where it was recorded. an outbreak among birds in December last year.
The workers did not suffer serious health effects, it added.
They are believed to have contracted the virus from poultry on the farm.
“Information on the world’s first case of avian flu transmission [H5N8] to humans it has already been sent to the World Health Organization, ”Popova said.
There are different subtypes of avian influenza viruses. While the highly contagious strain H5N8 is lethal to birds, it has never before been reported to have spread to humans.
Popova praised “the important scientific discovery” and said “time will tell” if the virus will mutate further.
“Discovering these mutations when the virus has not yet acquired the ability to transmit from human to human gives all of us, the entire world, time to prepare for potential mutations and react appropriately and in a timely manner,” Popova said.
The WHO confirmed that Russia had informed it about the development.
“We are in talks with national authorities to collect more information and assess the impact of this event on public health,” said a WHO spokesman. “If confirmed, this would be the first time H5N8 has infected people.”
The WHO stressed that Russian workers were “asymptomatic” and no person-to-person transmission had been reported.
Russia’s Vektor State Center for Virology and Biotechnology, which detected transmission to poultry farm workers, also developed one of the country’s several COVID-19 vaccines.
In the Soviet era, the laboratory, located in Koltsovo on the outskirts of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, carried out secret biological weapons research.
It still stocks viruses ranging from Ebola to smallpox.
In televised remarks, Vektor boss Rinat Maksyutov said the lab was ready to start developing test kits that would help detect potential cases of H5N8 in humans and begin work on a vaccine.
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