How does H5N1 virus differ from seasonal influenza viruses that infect humans?
TIM UYEKI Medical Epidemiologist
There’s a lot of differences between avian influenza and pandemic influenza, and seasonal influenza. So, avian influenza refers to disease in birds. Current situation right now is we have had rare human infections with avian influenza viruses. We have every year in the United States, during our fall and winter, and early spring, we have seasonal epidemics of influenza, of human influenza.
Pandemic influenza is something that’s very rare, and in the 20th century, we had three global influenza pandemics. We had a pandemic that started in 1918, and it was really a problem in 1918, 1919, 1920. Globally there are estimates that between 20 and 50 million people died during that pandemic, including probably around 600 to 650,000 people in the United States.
