Dr Andrew Catchpole, Chief Scientific Officer at hVIVO plc, said:
What do we know from the information available?
“There are only few very details that have emerged so far but the key point here is that the influenza surveillance network that is very well established in the UK is working well and was responsible for identifying the infection. The infected person clearly had flu-like symptoms on presentation to their GP in order for the GP to trigger collecting and sample and sending it in to the UKHSA as part of the surveillance network but they are reported to have experienced relatively mild disease, which is good for the person concerned but that fact alone doesn’t really tell us anything about transmission potential of the virus or the risk to vulnerable groups. Details on the age and the overall health status of the infected person have not been released so we do not know if this was an otherwise healthy individual whom we would expect to recover from flu without intervention or if the person was in a proportion of the population defined as vulnerable in terms of risk of severe disease with influenza infection.
hVIVO plc (formerly Open Orphan plc) is a rapidly growing specialist contract research organisation (CRO) and the world leader in testing infectious and respiratory disease vaccines and antivirals using human challenge clinical trials, providing end-to-end early clinical development services for its broad and long-standing client base of biopharma companies.
