There is a bird flu vaccine available in the US. Here’s Why You Can’t Get One

Like bird flu Georgia, a U.S. furore among poultry and dairy cattle, became the latest state to detect the virus in a commercial poultry flock and halted all poultry sales on Friday. reduce further spread of the disease. Egg prices are on the rise across the country — if you can find them at your local grocery store.

An ongoing epidemic in animals also caused at least 67 human cases of bird fluall but one cause mild disease. Earlier this month, a man in Louisiana He died after being admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of severe bird flu in December. This is the first recorded death due to H5N1 in the country.

The US has previously licensed three H5N1 vaccines for humans, but they are not commercially available. The government has purchased millions of doses for the national stockpile as needed. But even as the outbreak spread, federal health officials under President Joe Biden were hesitant to deploy them. According to experts, this decision is based on risk, and currently the risk of H5N1 remains low. Vaccination to farm workers and others at high risk of infection would be a more targeted tactic, but even this measure may be premature. Now, the decision rests with the new administration as a change in federal health care leadership is expected as President Donald Trump begins his second term.

William Schaffner, a physician and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, says: “Right now, it doesn’t seem necessary to get a vaccine to protect people from the perspective of the severity and ease of infection.”

So far, human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has not been identified, but health officials are watching the virus for any genetic changes that would make it more likely to be transmitted between people. Most bird flu infections are due to animal exposure. Of the 67 known human cases in the United States, 40 have been linked to sick dairy cattle and 23 have been linked to poultry farms and culling operations. In four other cases, the exact source is unknown.

In the United States, human cases have been mild, many causing only conjunctivitis. In some cases, people have mild respiratory symptoms. Except for the Louisiana patient, all individuals who tested positive for H5N1 recovered quickly and never required hospitalization. Historically, H5N1 has been fatal in about 50 percent of cases. A total of 954 cases of human H5N1 since 2003 The World Health Organization has been informed and about half of them died. Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and China have recorded the highest number of human deaths from bird flu.

These numbers come with a few caveats. First, many of these deaths occurred in areas where people lived in close proximity to sick poultry. “Under those circumstances, they probably think they’re getting a very large dose of virus,” says Schaffner.

Moreover, the case fatality rate—the proportion of infected people who die of the disease—takes into account only known cases, and some cases of H5N1 undoubtedly go undetected in part because bird flu symptoms are similar to those of other respiratory viruses. Language barriers among farm workers in the United States, lack of testing, and reluctance of workers to report illness are also factors. “We’re probably missing more cases than we’re detecting, and we’re more likely to detect a severe case,” says Shira Doron, MD, chief infection control specialist at Tufts Medicine in Boston and a hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center.