VOICES: There’s a new type of Avian Influenza (AI) in Canada and it’s killing wild birds. A new type of H5N1 to be exact, one that is part of a group of AIs called “Clade 2.3.4.4b” that are killing wild birds en masse all over the world.

A rare case of avian influenza infecting a human living in England was reported this week. Bird-to-human transmission is rare and human-to-human rarer still, but with UK outbreaks now double last year’s and predictions of Europe’s worst bird flu epidemic ever - coupled with the high mutation rate of influenza and cases of H5N1 detected in foxes, seals and other mammals - a human bird flu pandemic feels closer than ever.

The UK government has just announced an end of all major lockdown restrictions in time for the summer, yet the news that the first cases of H5N8 in humans - at a bird farm in Russia - only serves to remind us that it is only a matter of time before a worse pandemic strikes.