KATHMANDU, JUNE 15

In the last weeks a new strain of a bird flu virus was observed for the first time in humans in the People's Republic of China (PRC).

The virus, which has been traced to a reassortment of genes from wild birds in East Asia and chickens in East PRC, poses many urgent questions and raises global public health concerns about an expanding outbreak As of April 16, 63 confirmed cases of H7N9 in humans and 14 deaths have been reported in the PRC.

The number sounds small, however, what is concerning is that the virus clearly has the potential to cause severe disease and it is unclear how the virus is transmitted. The virus has genetic characteristics that suggest it might be better adapted than other bird flu strains to infect mammals - including humans - and people have no resistance to it.

On top of that, previous vaccines developed for H7 virus strains didn't cause strong immune response in humans, which means that further research is needed to develop an effective vaccine in case of an increasing outbreak of H7N9.

A version of this article appears in the print on June 16, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.