Human bird flu vaccines purchased by the Netherlands may offer good protection, new research shows

Interview with Rory de Vries, virologist of Erasmus MC
Bird flu vaccine

The vaccines had already been declared safe. But because the vaccine has been updated to the latest variant, just like with the annual flu shot, the effectiveness still had to be investigated. There are not yet any concrete plans to distribute the shots.

A bird flu vaccine for humans, of which a number of European member states jointly purchased around 665,000 doses last year, probably offers good protection against the virus. This emerges from a Finnish study that was published on Friday in Nature Microbiology, in which Erasmus MC in Rotterdam also took part. The shot induces immunity against multiple variants of bird flu that are currently circulating in Western Europe and in the United States. In poultry and wild birds in the Netherlands, the very contagious and disease-causing H5N1 variant currently predominates.

“On the basis of the high antibody response that we measured in the Finnish participants, we expect that the shot can prevent people from becoming ill from bird flu,” says virologist Rory de Vries of Erasmus MC.

Bron: NRC
Datum: 5 december 2025