Bird flu outbreak in Israel could spark the next global pandemic: scientists

A massive outbreak of bird flu in the Galilee is being tackled by the Israel National Security Council. According to scientists, it could become the next global pandemic, The Daily Beast reports.

Hundreds of millions of migrating birds fly through the region every year, compounding the potentially danger of an outbreak. As The Daily Beast points out, the virus can be deadly to humans. More than half of the confirmed 863 human cases since 2003 have been fatal.

“There could be a mutation that also infects people and turns into a mass disaster,” said Yossi Leshem, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University and director of the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration at Latrun. So far, at least 5,400 wild cranes have died from the new strain, categorized as H5N1.

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“It is a tragic ecological event,” he said. “And we simply do not know how it will end, or where it will lead," Israeli Ministry of Agriculture's Yoav Motro told the Beast.

“There is no way to know what is going to happen,” Motro said. “When you identify avian flu in chicken coops you kill all the chickens and disinfect the coops. In the wild, at this level of infection, I don't know where it will lead. I’m worried.”

Read the full report at The Daily Beast.