Tracking Emerging Public Health Challenges – January 15, 2026 – Bird Flu
“This was to everyone’s astonishment,” Hutchinson says, “You now have a situation where a large proportion of consumer milk in the US at any given time contains genetic material from these highly pathogenic viruses.”
“This process, known as genome reassortment, has played a key role in sparking past pandemics, and many experts are concerned the same could happen if a person infected with a human influenza were also infected with bird flu. This may, for example, allow the virus to gain the ability to transmit effectively in humans, while maintaining a structure which is alien and undetectable to our immune systems.
“In a sense,” Hutchinson says, “the question about reassortment is not ‘When is it going to happen?’, but ‘Why isn’t it happening all the time?’ Because there are so many influenza variants out there, and we don’t really know the barriers to it taking off.””
“The US today is one of the most active hotspots for avian influenza transmission. Yet the national response is fragmented. Farm biosecurity measures remain the primary line of defence, even as evidence grows that the virus may be travelling between farms on the wind – a mode that fences, disinfectant and clean boots cannot stop.”
“As 2026 begins, H5N1 is circulating in more species, across more continents, than ever before. It is entrenched in global wildlife. It has destabilised farming. It is mutating, spreading and defying prediction.
Hutchinson’s message is clear: vigilance, not panic. “There are reasons to hope as well as reasons to be alarmed,” he says. “But there’s definitely no reason to be relaxed about this one.”
What scientists want next is simple: more surveillance, more transparency, more vaccination and more urgency, especially in the United States, where the virus is spreading rapidly, and surveillance remains uneven. Whether they’ll get their wishes, however, remains to be seen.” (1)
Last year, the Trump administration dismantled biosecurity work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gutted the White House office of pandemic preparedness, and cut support for the surveillance of pandemic threats within the United States and abroad.
With the exception of a few announcements from the Agriculture Department early last year, the administration has not held briefings on the threat posed by bird flu or efforts to prepare for worst-case scenarios.
The Agriculture Department and Secretary Brooke Rollins have spoken about bird flu to the news media and at Cabinet meetings throughout last year, the department said in an emailed statement.
The department’s response to bird flu “is grounded in decades of scientifically validated epidemiological practices and biosecurity protocols,” the statement said.” (2)
1.‘It’s completely out of control’: Scientists warn bird flu could spark a human pandemic in 2026, By Tom Howarth, https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/bird-flu-2026-analysis
2.Bird Flu Viruses Raise Mounting Concerns Among Scientists, By Apoorva Mandavilli, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/health/bird-flu-viruses-health.html
curated by Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H.
Clinical Professor of Environmental Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai