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Shares in vaccine developers jumped on Tuesday after the US reported its first human death from the H5 strain of bird flu.
Moderna’s stock rose 6 per cent, Novavax gained more than 12 per cent and CureVac’s shares advanced 10 per cent. Shares in Pfizer, one of the biggest US drugmakers, added 1.6 per cent.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday confirmed the death of a patient from the H5 strain of bird flu in Louisiana. The CDC said there had been 67 H5N1 bird flu cases in the country since 2022.
The risk to the general public “remains low”, the agency said.
“Most importantly, no person-to-person transmission spread has been identified,” the CDC added. “As with the case in Louisiana, most H5 bird flu infections are related to animal-to-human exposures.”
In May, Pfizer said it was developing a vaccine for a strain of bird flu that was “currently causing significant disease in birds and cows and recent case reports illustrating limited crossover into humans”.
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