PARIS — The bird flu virus that has been spreading among wild birds, poultry and mammals could lead to a pandemic worse than COVID-19 if it mutates to transmit between humans, the head of France’s Institut Pasteur respiratory infections centre said.

The highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has led to the culling of hundreds of millions of birds in the past few years, disrupting food supplies and driving up prices, though human infections remain rare.

“What we fear is the virus adapting to mammals, and particularly to humans, becoming capable of human-to-human transmission, and that virus would be a pandemic virus,” Marie-Anne Rameix-Welti, medical director at the Institut Pasteur’s respiratory infections centre, told Reuters.

The Institut Pasteur was among the fi

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