Avian flu, or H5N1, has continued to spread across North America since its arrival in mid-January 2024, so far infecting 136 million domestic birds, 900 dairy herds and more than 11,000 wild birds. Although the risk to humans remains low, the U.S. Department of Health and Health Services (HHS) warns that the outbreak has pandemic potential. There are 67 confirmed cases in humans in the United States, including one death in Louisiana, all in people who have had close contact with domestic animals. In Canada, where more than 15 million domestic birds have been infected, mostly in British Columbia, only one human case has been reported; that of a teenaged male in Vancouver who contracted a strain of the strain of the virus associated with wild birds in the Fraser Valley.

The HHS has awarded $590 million to Moderna to speed up the development of a vaccine against avian flu. Moderna was one of first two pharmaceutical companies to successfully develop an mRNA-based vaccine against Covid-19. This new award is in addition to $176 million given to Moderna by the HHS last July. According to the HHS, the Moderna model is intended to be affective not only against avian flu strains now found in birds and cows, but also against future variants that may create a pandemic in humans.

“Avian flu variants have proven to be particularly unpredictable and dangerous to humans in the past,” says outgoing HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with the University of Saskatchewan, agrees: “There is a non-zero chance that this virus can cause a pandemic,” she says. “We need to be doing everything we can to prevent that from happening.”

Meanwhile, in the United States, President Trump’s pick to replace Becerra as secretary of Health and Health Services, John F. Kennedy, Jr., has stated that he is opposed to the development of vaccines against infectious diseases. And on January 23, the New York Times reported that “the Trump administration told federal health officials to pause public communications, including bird flu updates.”

In the United States, the ratio of Covid deaths to confirmed Covid cases was 1 to 110.