Article from Reuters: Animal health body backs bird flu vaccination to avoid pandemic
By Sybille De La Hamaide
PARIS, May 21 (Reuters) – Governments should consider vaccinating poultry against bird flu, which has killed hundreds of millions of birds and infected mammals worldwide, to prevent the virus from turning into a new pandemic, the head of the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) said.
The severity of the current outbreak of avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, and the economic and personal damage it has caused, has led governments to reconsider vaccinating poultry. However, some, like the United States, remain reluctant mainly because of the trade curbs this would entail.
“We are coming out of a COVID crisis where every country realised the hypothesis of a pandemic was real,” WOAH Director General Monique Eloit told Reuters in an interview.