Will H5N1 cause the next influenza pandemic?

Dr. Gary Nabel
Director, Vaccine Research Center
National Institutes of Health

The H5N1 virus is an emerging virus. And what we know about the virus thus far is that in animals, particularly in birds when they get infected, is that there is a very high rate of mortality. Whenever you see that kind of mortality in a virus, it’s a warning signal to us that if that virus should jump species, in other words, if it should infect humans, that it might do the same to us. There have been some cases where people have been infected directly from birds, and in fact there has been fairly aggressive disease. But that’s the bad news. The good news is that the virus thus far is not transmitting efficiently from person to person, and that’s the one thing thus far that works in our favor to prevent an ongoing pandemic or the outbreak of a pandemic.