Shares in vaccine makers including Moderna and BioNTech rose sharply on Wednesday after Australia reported its first human H5N1 bird flu case and the US detected its third, increasing fears of wider transmission.
Health authorities in the Australian state of Victoria on Wednesday reported a bird flu case in a child infected during a trip to India who has since made a full recovery. Michigan state health authorities also confirmed they had detected a case of bird flu in a dairy worker exposed to an infected cattle herd.
Bird flu has been spreading widely in US cattle herds, having been detected in nine states during the current outbreak. The two new human cases bring the total of human bird flu infections detected so far this year to eight worldwide but they add to worries among health officials on alert over another virus spilling over into human populations, just a year after the official end of the Covid-19 pandemic.