Q&A: Health Care Experts on H5 Bird Flu Vaccine Developments

The H5 bird flu outbreak in the US started at the end of March 2024 when a commercial dairy farm worker in Texas reported conjunctivitis and shortly after tested positive for the bird flu.¹ Since then, contaminated milk has been found on grocery store shelves, the first human without animal exposure contracted the virus, and 30 additional cases have been reported in the US. And with all of these developments ongoing, risk of a greater public health crisis spurred on by the bird flu is still considered low, according to public health experts.²

However, despite no human-to-human contact of the virus reported, health care experts are still preparing immunization against the bird flu if it were to begin infecting humans on a larger scale. And with recent lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic lingering, many would agree that it’s never too early to prepare for an unprecedented public health event. With the 2024 bird flu outbreak in the US still looming large, 2 health care experts joined Drug Topics to discuss current vaccine developments for the H5 bird flu.

David G. Hill, MD, is chair of the board of directors at the American Lung Association and director of clinical research with Waterbury Pulmonary Associates. He is a respiratory care expert who specializes in pulmonary health. Robert H. Hopkins, Jr, MD, is the medical director for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and has worked to build up his organization’s vaccination programs.

Drug Topics: If the bird flu become a public health concern in the future, would vaccines be a quick and convenient option?

David G. Hill: So, there are vaccines in development. Using COVID-19 as a model, we rapidly created vaccines to really a completely novel virus for COVID-19. H5N1 bird flu is [an] influenza virus where we've had vaccine technology for decades. There are vaccines in development. There have been vaccines made in the past, so there are some bird flu vaccines in the national defense stockpile, but I think they could ramp up production of a vaccine relatively quickly.

The biggest issue, if there was an epidemic or pandemic, would be public uptake of the vaccine. The struggle we face in clinical care and in public health right now is there is so much misinformation about vaccination and a lot of resistance from a lot of people to getting vaccinated that I fear if we had a bird flu outbreak, there'd be a good proportion of the population who would be unwilling or very hesitant to get vaccinated.

Drug Topics: What are the current developments regarding a bird flu vaccine?

Robert H. Hopkins: Well, there are some candidate viruses that have been isolated from some of these animal infections, as well as some of the human infections. Those have been characterized genetically, and it's found that the type of virus that we're seeing circulating is similar to some strains that have been evaluated previously by [National Institutes of Health] and by some vaccine manufacturers.

They're in the process of developing some candidate vaccines against H5N1 influenza. It's not widely available yet. It's not been released, but they're in the process of trying to build some of that supply so that it can be tested to show that it's effective [and] safe. [The] technology’s very similar to what we use for routine influenza vaccination. In addition to that, I would encourage everybody to get their routine, annual flu vaccine. Everyone 6 months of age and older should. If we minimize the impact of influenza of all types across our population, that's good for the health of our society.

READ MORE: Everything You Need to Know About the US Bird Flu Outbreak

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References

1. Health Alert Network (HAN) - 00506 | Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus: Identification of Human Infection and Recommendations for Investigations and Response. CDC. April 5, 2024. Accessed October 25, 2024. https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2024/han00506.asp

2. H5N1 Bird Flu: Current Situation. CDC. October 24, 2024. Accessed October 25, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html