From Seals to People – What H5N1 in Patagonia Foretells

The scene on the beach was horrific. Thousands of mothers and baby elephant seals lay in the sand, taken out by a deadly virus.

Dr. Marcela Uhart and her colleagues were shocked by what they found after the H5N1 avian influenza virus swept through a colony of elephant seals on the coast of Argentina’s far south Patagonia region. More than 17,000 of the animals had died, their bodies ravaged by the virus.

H5N1 bird flu has swept around the world, destroying poultry flocks and wildlife. Like other influenza viruses, it mutates constantly and swaps genetic material in a process called reassortment. It can now infect not just birds, but livestock such as cattle and sheep as well as mink, pet cats, sea lions, and human beings.

It has devastated egg production and threatens dairy operations. The biggest fear is that it will acquire both the ability to spread from human to human and maintain its most deadly qualities. An H5N1 pandemic has the potential to be much, much worse than Covid-19 was.

People can’t be ready for the virus unless the world keeps an eye on it. That’s what Uhart, who is Director of the Latin America Program at the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the University of California, Davis, is trying to do. That’s why her team studied the bodies of the dead elephant seals and other animals killed by the virus.

“Mammal-to-mammal transmission could be a stepping-stone in the evolutionary pathway for these viruses to become capable of human-to-human transmission,” they wrote in their report, published in the journal Nature.

“What we can learn from what happens in wildlife is crucial,” Uhart says. “That is where these viruses evolve.”

Listen as Uhart chats with One World, One Health host Maggie Fox about what her team discovered in Patagonia and what it might mean for every animal on the planet, including  humans.

And listen to our other podcast episodes looking at H5N1 bird flu and how we should be preparing for the next pandemic.