Thursday morning 2nd January 2025, the US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that they have developed a standard for H5N1 influenza tests.
Testing times
This novel H5N1 test standard will allow regional testing centres to calibrate their equipment to test specifically for H5N1 bird flu besides other flu strains. In a collaboration with the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), the government scientists have created a synthetic chunk of viral genetic material that is not infectious and cannot replicate.
The CDC and NIST hope that getting assays out early will help the US and North America to avoid another pandemic. In a press release for the NIST research chemist Peter M. Vallone explained, ‘We believe this genetic material will significantly advance our national readiness for potential pandemic threats.’
H5N1 test standards
Government researchers found three sections of the H5N1 virus that are both slightly different to other strains of the flu virus and non-pathogenic – this means they can’t cause disease and are harmless. They replicated short chunks of RNA coding for these sections in a lab and packed them into vials for distribution. They hope to send these standards out as soon as possible, and are dispatching vials out to testing facilities for free (other than the cost of shipping).
‘The sooner this genetic material reaches manufacturers, the faster we can facilitate the development and validation of new H5N1 diagnostics,’ says NIST microbial geneticist Scott Jackson.
Lessons Learned
The early action of the CDC to organize H5N1 standards is in sharp contrast to the slow response to the appearance of COVID-19 in late 2019. According to the Brown University School of public health, key errors in the US response to SARS-CoV-2 included failing to ‘quickly make use of its massive network of high-quality laboratories to diagnose and characterize infections’.
This meant that COVID-19 could spread disastrously fast in the community before the CDC could provide diagnostic testing. Once the tests were available, poor infrastructure and slow distribution caused delays in tests reaching facilities and to release results. What’s more, this delay had the CDC trailing behind new genetic variants, struggling to respond with accurate tests as the virus mutated.
This speedy response by the NIST suggests that the current US government has learned from the COVID-19 debacle and are ramping up their pandemic preparedness programme.
Will the US fare better this time? We can only watch and wait.
NIST Develops Genetic Material for Validating H5N1 Bird Flu Diagnostic Tests. NIST. Published online January 2, 2025. Accessed January 2, 2025. https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2025/01/nist-develops-genetic-material-validating-h5n1-bird-flu-diagnostic-tests
Why Did the Best Prepared Country in the World Fare So Poorly during COVID? | Pandemic Center | School of Public Health | Brown University. Accessed January 2, 2025. https://pandemics.sph.brown.edu/why-did-best-prepared-country-world-fare-so-poorly-during-covid
