The United States and Europe are taking steps to acquire or manufacture H5N1 bird flu vaccines that could be used to protect at-risk poultry and dairy workers, veterinarians and lab technicians, government officials said, moves influenza experts say could curb the threat of a pandemic.
U.S officials last week said they were moving bulk vaccine from CSL Seqirus that closely matches the current virus into finished shots that could provide 4.8 million doses of vaccine. European health officials told Reuters they were in talks to acquire CSL's prepandemic vaccine.
Canadian health officials said they have met with GSK, maker of Canada's seasonal flu shots, to discuss acquiring and manufacturing a prepandemic bird flu vaccine once its seasonal flu production capacity is freed up.
Other countries, including the UK, are discussing how to proceed on prepandemic vaccines, scientists said.
The actions follow the explosive spread of a new strain of bird flu that emerged in late 2020 and has caused unprecedented numbers of deaths among wild birds and domestic poultry and has begun infecting many mammal species.
In March, U.S. officials reported the first outbreak of the virus in dairy cattle, which has infected dozens of herds in nine states and two dairy workers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has estimated that 20% of the U.S. milk supply shows signs of the virus, indicating a wider spread is likely.
Human exposures to the virus in poultry and dairy operations could increase the risk that the virus will mutate and gain the ability to spread easily in people.
“All of our efforts need to be focused on preventing those events from happening,” said Matthew Miller, co-director of the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub at McMaster University. “Once we have widespread infections of humans, we're in big trouble.”
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, said she has been in discussions with U.S. and Canadian officials about using vaccines to protect workers following the virus' spread into new mammal species.
Dawn O'Connell of the U.S. Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response said the government is "looking closely" at the possibility of vaccinating farm workers and others in close contact with the virus.
The U.S. has contracts with CSL and GSK to test prepandemic vaccines that more closely match the circulating virus than older H5N1 vaccines in the stockpile. The U.S. is moving forward with the CSL vaccine, a Department of Health and Human Services official confirmed.
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