an outbreak of virus A H5N1, known as bird fluwhich affects tens of domestic cats in Polandis being analyzed by the veterinary authorities due to its unusual characteristics and potential danger of expansion. In an interview published this Tuesday by the Polish press, a veterinarian who detected one of the first cases of this outbreak on June 18, warned that, in Internet discussion groups specialized in animal epidemics, several colleagues were already alerting cases of deceased domestic cats after presenting severe neurological and respiratory symptoms.

The vet, who has his own practice in the town of Pulawy, informed the media across the country about the disease and made a public appeal for no domestic cat left the country and their owners stop feeding them raw meat, one of the possible origins of the disease. It was not until two weeks later that several Polish laboratories confirmed that they were cases of bird flu, which confirmed the impressions of the Pulawy veterinarian.

At the moment 61 cats have died, some of them euthanized, due to an outbreak that concerns the Polish health authorities. Several veterinarians across the country have criticized the reaction of the GIW, the National Veterinary Inspectorate, which is accused of “having published some superficial advice” and not having decreed, for example, the inspection of canned cat food consumed in the country. A Polish veterinarian, interviewed on the radio on Tuesday, said that “the chief inspector of the GIW first took a long time to admit that a virus had been detected, without specifying that it was bird flu; then he confirmed it, but said that it was a few cases; and finally questioned the results of the analysis”.

What is the severity of the outbreak

The true scope of the outbreak, whose most alarming characteristic is that it occurred at the same time, but in areas very far from each other, remains to be determined, and some specialists say that the true number of cases may be several hundred. Last week, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stressed that his body “monitors the situation in close cooperation with its partners and the Government of Poland”.

In addition, from this organization it has been underlined that the cases mean for the world “a new reminder that this bird flu threat could cause the next pandemic”. This was revealed by Dr. Wenqing Zhang, director of the WHO Global Influenza Program. Ghebreyesus also highlighted in his opening address that avian influenza A (H5N1) “is of particular concern because it is known to be very dangerous for humans, although it has never been shown to be easily transmissible between people.”