Bird influenza are known not only for their danger and severity, but also for their ability to jump to other creatures, including humans. However, recently the ongoing H5N1 was detected in an animal already having a rough go of things: a polar bear. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
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00:00Bird influenzas are known not only for their danger and severity, but also for their ability to jump to other creatures, including humans.
00:07However, recently the ongoing H5N1 bird flu was detected in an animal already having a rough go of things, a polar bear.
00:14It was discovered dead in northern Alaska, and the same strain has already been detected in myriad other animals and even people.
00:22Luckily in humans, the symptoms appear mild, but this recent jumping to polar bears highlights an important aspect about influenza viruses.
00:29They are extremely highly adaptable, with simple genetic codes which can easily change via two avenues.
00:35The first is mutation, or changing due to random chance.
00:38However, flu viruses can also shift their code with reassortment, or when two viruses in the same host share genetic material and create new never-before-seen genomes.
00:47This gives flu viruses a better chance to not only survive, but it could change the way the virus works moving forward as well.
00:54A big concern for epidemiologists is whether those mutations or reassortments allow for human-to-human transmission, something not yet detected in the most recent H5N1 virus.
01:04So how did the polar bear become infected?
01:06Conservationists are hopeful it was a chance encounter with an infected bird, and not transmitted from another bear.