STAT May 7, 2024
Jeremy Farrar, now the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, was working in Vietnam 20 years ago when the H5N1 virus started to spread across Asia — at that point in poultry. He recalls there was a reluctance among farmers to cull their chickens because they weren’t being compensated for them. Movement of infected birds to evade culling only served to disseminate the virus, which in the years since has spread to all continents except Australia.
It’s important to keep that experience in mind, he told STAT Monday, as the H5N1 bird flu virus now spreads among dairy cattle in the U.S. Farrar stressed that the social context is key in responding to disease threats like H5N1, noting that a similar...
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