UK’s top scientists join forces to battle bird flu outbreaks

UK’s top scientists join forces to battle bird flu outbreaks

Written by Defra Press Office

There has been widespread, positive coverage including in The Observer, BBC News, New Scientist, I News, Daily Mail, Vet Times, Farmers Guardian and BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today of our announcement that top scientists are coming together to battle bird flu outbreaks.

The eight-strong consortium, headed by the world-leading research team at the Animal and Plant Health Agency, has received £1.5 million in funding and has been tasked with developing new strategies to tackle future outbreaks.

The consortium follows this year’s bird flu outbreak which has been the largest and longest ever experienced in the UK and in parts of Europe. This news has been welcomed by the UK’s poultry sector and rural communities, which have been severely disrupted with compulsory indoor housing measures put in place to protect poultry from this ruthless disease.

Professor Ian Brown, APHA’s Head of Virology and project manager, said:

This investment in a new research consortium will bring together the greatest minds from eight world-leading British institutions to address gaps in our understanding of bird flu, helping us to control the spread of the disease, while furthering UK animal health science and ensuring we maintain our world-leading reputation in the field.

UK’s Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss said:

This new consortium will allow us to combine our expertise at a national level to increase the speed and quality of our research, ensuring we can develop new strategies to aid our efforts against this insidious disease and hopefully in time reduce the impact on the poultry sector.

Our world-leading researchers will help build our understanding in a number of key areas, including:

• what it is about the current virus strains that helps them to form larger and longer outbreaks
• understanding transmission and infection in different bird populations, including how the virus transmits from wild birds to farmed poultry, the gaps in biosecurity that allow the virus to penetrate premises, and how this could be addressed
• mapping and modelling the spread of infection over time and across species
• why some birds, such as ducks, are more resistant to bird flu strains
• developing models to predict how the viruses will evolve and spread in the future; and
• inform risk mitigation measures in birds to reduce disease burden thereby protecting against zoonotic transmission occurring from animals to humans, to prevent future spillovers of influenza with pandemic potential into humans.

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