Zoonosis

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a stark warning regarding the spread of bird flu (H5N1) to various species, including humans, expressing deep concern over its impact and potential consequences, according to reports from AFP.

The World Health Organization voiced alarm Thursday at the growing spread of H5N1 bird flu to new species, including humans, who face an "extraordinarily high" mortality rate.

"This remains I think an enormous concern," the U.N. health agency's chief scientist Jeremy Farrar told reporters in Geneva.

Due to the fact that even the first news about the coronavirus from China were vague and mysterious, and that no one could have guessed that a pandemic would occur, the news that a virus that attacks the lungs appeared in China and that caused hospitalization of large number of children went off like a bomb.

As night fell in Mexico's Yucatan jungle, veterinarian Omar Garcia extracted blood and fluids from a bat as part of an investigation aimed at preventing the next potential pandemic.

China has confirmed the first known human case of the H3N8 strain of avian flu, but health authorities say there is a low risk of widespread transmission among people.

H3N8 is known to have been circulating since 2002 after first emerging in North American waterfowl. It is known to infect horses, dogs and seals, but has not previously been detected in humans.

Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery.
Most scientists believe it emerged in the wild and jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. Others theorize it escaped from a Chinese lab.

Demand for regular supplies of affordable meat will create future pandemics that will make Covid-19 pandemic look like a "dress rehearsal", scientists are warning.  

Producing meat is creating the perfect breeding ground for diseases of the same kind to emerge, according to the South African academics.

U.S. President Donald Trump said last week that his government was trying to determine whether the virus emanated from a lab in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus pandemic emerged in December.

Turkey will suspend imports from China of all kinds of animal products as new measures to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on Feb. 7.

Koca said all imports of living and non-living animals, animal and waste products would be halted temporarily.