Thanks to Diane Lanigan for tweeting the link to this January 31 report from Global Reinsurance.com: Insurers need to prepare against ‘man-made’ H5N1 pandemic. Excerpt:
Insurers need to ensure they have enough capital to manage against the risk of a man-made H5N1 avian influenza pandemic being created, according to catastrophe modelling firm Risk Managment Solutions (RMS).
Research resumed last week on the highly virulent strain after a year long-ban, with researchers increasing the transmissibility or virulence of H5N1 in order to prepare vaccines and other medical treatments in the case of a pandemic.
“Laboratory experimentation remains controversial because of the possibility of creating a super flu that might not have occurred naturally,” said RMS’ LifeRisks senior director Maura Sullivan.
“The H5N1 influenza virus is highly virulent and rapidly mutating, and its evolution, through either natural or laboratory means, could pose the most significant pandemic threat of the modern era.”
RMS has used its infectious disease model to simulate scenarios for pandemics that could result from the escape of a virus from a research laboratory.
It estimates that there is a small but significant likelihood of an escaped lab pathogen triggering a global pandemic.
