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.

SPECIAL REPORT: The five-month-long bird flu ‘flockdown’, a set of quarantine measures affecting the UK’s domestic poultry population, has finally come to an end. Claire Hamlett reports on the struggles faced by chickens and more yet to come as chicken-keepers return to work following Covid-19.

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.

Recent reports of avian influenza outbreaks have sparked fresh fears about the spread of new strains among humans, but we often forget about the impact of ‘bird flu lockdowns’ on the work of rescue groups and sanctuaries, writes Claire Hamlett.

A new collaborative project led by scientists in the US and Canada has identified at least 887 viruses present in wildlife that carry a risk of spreading to humans. Of those listed in the ‘SpillOver’ watchlist, only 38 are known zoonotic diseases such as Covid-19, Ebola and rabies, and the list doesn’t even include influenza or any viruses associated with insect carriers and domesticated animals.

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.

Over the last few decades, hundreds of human pathogens have emerged at a rate unprecedented in human history. Emerged from where? Mostly from animals, says Dr Michael Greger in our first Surge guest blog. Part of the Not If, But When campaign.