Can bird flu become an atmosphere?
In early February 2020, China detained more than 50 million people, hoping to hinder the spread of a new Corona virus. Nobody knew exactly how it was spreading, but Lydia Morwska, an air quality expert at Queensland Technology University in Australia, did not like the evidence that I was able to find.
It looked as if the Corona virus was spreading in the air, as it was transmitted from the narrow drops that were exhaled by the injured. If this is true, standard measures such as surface cleansing and staying a few meters away from people with symptoms will not be sufficient to avoid infection.
Dr. Morviska and her colleague, Johnji Sawo, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, formulated a terrible warning. And ignoring the spread of the air -mobile virus, they wrote, which will lead to many infections. But when the scientists sent their comment to the medical magazines, they were rejected again and again.
“No one is listening,” said Dr. Morvska.
It took more than two years until the World Health Organization officially admitted that Covid has spread to the air. Now, five years after Dr. Morvska started the alarm sound, scientists pay more attention to how Other diseases It may also spread through the air. At the top of their list is bird flu.
Last year, disease control centers were registered 66 people In the United States who had a bird of influenza, the bird is called H5N1. Some of them are more likely to go through dealing with birds loaded with viruses. In March, the Ministry of Agriculture also discovered the cows that also had H5N1, and that animals could transport the virus to people – perhaps through drops that were sprayed from milking machines.
If the bird flu is gaining the ability to spread from person to person, it may result from the following epidemic. So some influenza experts follow anxiously that can make the virus Babted by airSurging in small drops through hospitals, restaurants and other common spaces, where their upcoming victims can inhale.
“The presence of this evidence is really important early, so that we do not end up in the same situation when Kovid appeared, as everyone was scrambling to know how the virus was transmitted.” The disease expert at the University of Maryland.
Scientists were arguing about how influenza viruses spread for more than a century. In 1918, a dynasty of the influenza called H1N1 swept the world and killed more than 50 million people. It was treated by some American cities as an atmosphere, and requires masks in a year and open windows in schools. But many public health experts have been convinced that the influenza has spread largely by direct contact, such as touching the polluted door handle, or obtaining sneezing or coughing.
H5N1 appeared first to light In 1996When it was revealed in wild birds in China. The virus was affected by the areas of the digestive system and spread through their stools. Over the years, the virus has extended to millions of chicken and other cultivated birds. Hundreds of people have become sick, most of them from dealing with sick animals. These victims developed H5N1 infection in their lungs, which have often proven to be fatal. But the virus could not move easily from person to person.
The threat of the exacerbation of the H5N1 to human population has been closely looking at how influenza viruses spread. In one of the experiments, Sander Herves, a virus at Erasmus Rotterdam University in the Netherlands, tested his colleagues if H5N1 could have spread among the boats in cages that were placed four inches away.
“Animals cannot touch each other, and they cannot lick each other,” said Dr. Herves. “So the only way to transmit the infection is through the air.”
When Dr. Herves and his colleagues included H5N1 viruses in a nose of rodents, they developed lung infections. They did not spread viruses into healthy boats in other cages.
But Dr. Herves and his colleagues discovered that some of the mutations allowed H5N1 to become air -bored. Genetically modified viruses that carried these mutations spread from one to another out of three of the four experiments, making healthy bottles sick.
When scientists shared these results in 2012, an intense debate erupted on whether scientists should intend to intentionally produce viruses that may start a new pandemic. However, other scientists continued to search to find out how these mutations allowed the influenza to spread in the air.
Some research suggested that viruses become more stable, so that you can withstand a flight through the air inside a drop. When other mammals inhale the drops, some mutations allow viruses with cells in the top airway of the animal. Other mutations may allow the virus to flourish at the cold airway temperature, making many new viruses that can then exhale.
It has been shown to follow the influenza between humans more difficult, despite the fact that a Billion people Obtaining seasonal influenza every year. But some studies have indicated a mobile transmission. In 2018, the researchers recruited the patient students with influenza and Make them breathe A air sample in the form of a century. Thirty -nine per cent of the small drops they spoiled carried virus viruses.
Despite these results, how the influenza spreads into the air is still unclear. Scientists cannot provide an accurate number of the percentage of influenza cases caused by a portable widespread infection versus a polluted surface like the door handle.
“The very basic knowledge is already missing,” said Dr. Herves.
During the influenza season last year, Dr. Coleman and her colleagues brought sick people with influenza to a hotel in Baltimore. Patient volunteers spent some time in a room with healthy people, playing games and speaking together.
Dr. Coleman and her colleagues collected the influenza viruses that float around the room. But none of the volunteers without the disease, so scientists have not been able to compare the number of times the influenza affects people across the air instead of short -term coughing or on the surfaces covered with viruses.
“It is difficult to imitate real life,” said Dr. Coleman.
While Dr. Coleman and her colleagues continue to try to determine the spread of influenza, bird flu affects more and more animals throughout the United States. Even cats are infected, perhaps by drinking raw milk or eating raw pet food.
Some influenza experts are concerned that H5N1 acquires some of the mutations required to move by air. An isolated virus from the Texas dairy factor had a boom that might speed up its copies in the atmosphere, for example. When Dr. Herves and his colleagues spray Infections with air -backed drops have developed the Texas virus, and 30 percent of animals.
“Laborators in the United States and all over the world are exchanged to see if these viruses are approaching something that could be very dangerous for humans,” said Dr. Herves.
Sima Lakdala, a virus at Emori University, said it would be impossible to predict a date – or even if – bird influenza viruses will get additional mutations necessary to spread quickly from person to person. But as the virus is running on farms and many infected people, the possibilities of mobile development are airing.
“What is shocking to me is that we let nature do this experience,” said Dr. Lakdawal.