On Wednesday, Scientists realized that the bird flu tension responsible for the current death of an 11-year-old girl in Cambodia has mutated, making it more adept at infecting human cells, Sky News reported. Scientists warn about the alarming situation of the mutated bird flu virus leaking among people.
Scientists, who uncover this discovery are calling for it to be treated with the highest concern, as there are already some indications that the mutated virus is spreading among people.
An 11-year-old young girl from Prey Veng province became the first fatality of the H5N1 virus this year, and her father has also tested positive for the virus, although he has no symptoms of illness yet.
The Dr.Erik-led team at the Pasteur Institute of Cambodia cracked the genetic sequence of the virus that caused the girl’s death. They discovered that the virus was different from the one found in birds.
There are some indications that this virus has gone through a human. Just getting into a new host allows those one or two viruses in that cloud to survive better and become the dominant population.
Something may be happening here in Cambodia and something may be happening on the other side of the world in South America. But we don’t know what could cause the problem tomorrow.
We should take the threat seriously.”
Karlsson told Sky News
Currently, bird flu has difficulty spreading between humans because it lacks the required transformations to bind to receptors near the lungs or nasal passages.
Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that it was raising its preparedness for a pandemic in response to this threat. The agency stated that it had several vaccine and drug candidates in development. According to DailyMail, National testing capacity is also being increased in case the H5N1 virus strain spreads to humans.
