"We worried that under circumstances where many animals are confined in small places, the pathogen might rearrange genetically into a new pandemic virus,"
"might be the big one that many of us have worried about"
"You don't want to stockpile millions of vaccine doses that you may never need,"
An H5N1 outbreak in Finland during summer 2023 affected mink, foxes, and raccoon dogs and led to the culling of nearly half a million animals and increased public-health vigilance. Authorities offered vaccination to high-risk groups including fur-farm workers, laboratory technicians, and veterinarians, constituting the first national H5N1 vaccination programme. The vaccine was developed by CSL Seqirus. Influenza vaccines are produced in chicken eggs or cell lines, and new batches can take up to six months to manufacture. The European Medicines Agency licensed the Seqirus shot in July 2024, and the fur-farm outbreak ended without human infections, prompting caution about large stockpiles.
Read at Nature
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]