#19,363
In the summer of 2024 , the EU Commission secured access for
Member States to purchase 665,000 doses of zoonotic influenza vaccines to prevent avian flu, with the first shipment scheduled to go to Finland, which had recently experienced a prolonged H5 outbreak in fur farms (see
Finland: MOH Announcement On Avian Flu Vaccine Availability For People At High Risk).
From the
EU 6/24 announcement:
The vaccine is intended for those most exposed to potential transfers of avian influenza from birds or animals, such as poultry farm workers and veterinarians. It aims to prevent the spread or potential outbreaks of avian influenza in Europe, protecting citizens and livelihoods. The vaccine is the only preventive zoonotic avian influenza vaccine currently authorized in the EU.
Fifteen EU and EEA Member States are participating in this voluntary procurement with the company Seqirus UK Ltd. The contract allows each participating country to take into account their public health context and order vaccines depending on national need. The contract will run for a maximum of 4 years.
This initial order was enough to vaccinate 330,000 people (assuming 2 doses each), with an option to buy another 40 million doses if needed. But the EU would need nearly 900 million doses to cover their entire population.
Last May, in
Vaccines: Lessons from the 2024 avian influenza vaccination campaign in Finland: a qualitative inquiry, we looked at the disappointingly low uptake of the H5 vaccine by Finland's target groups, with the authors reporting:
In 2024, Finland became a global forerunner to offer H5 vaccine to occupational risk groups, specifically fur and poultry workers, following an extensive HPAI H5N1 outbreak in 2023 in fur-farmed minks and foxes. Despite targeted efforts to reach the people at increased risk, only 8,6% of the target population received the first dose and 7,5% completed both doses.
While disappointing, this uptake is not unexpected, given the hurdles public health has faced getting
poultry, swine, and fur farmers to get the seasonal flu vaccine to try to prevent reverse zoonosis.
And, as we've seen previously (see
Two Surveys (UK & U.S.) Illustrating The Public's Lack of Concern Over Avian Flu) - in addition to growing vaccine hesitancy - the public appears largely unconvinced over the HPAI threat.
Last December in
ECDC Pre-pandemic Guidance: Strategies to Fight Avian and Swine flu in Humans we looked at a
71-page operations framework for European countries to use when dealing with outbreaks of novel swine or avian influenza.
One of the topics covered was potential pre-pandemic vaccination of high-risk individuals with a zoonotic influenza A(H5) vaccine.
Yesterday the ECDC published the results of a survey of 30 EU/EEA member nations on their plans for current or future H5 vaccination of humans, of which 27 responded.
This is a fairly brief report (9 pages), which finds 5 (19%) of reporting countries have begun limited vaccination of high-risk individuals, another 11% plan to begin offering the vaccine in the next year, and the remaining 70% have no plans in place at this time.
While there are sizable gaps in the data, uptake of the vaccine - as we saw in Finland - appears to have been quite limited.
All of this is self-reported data, of course - and since there is no standardized reporting format - making comparisons between countries is extremely difficult.
Follow the link to read the report in its entirety. I'll have a brief postscript after the break.
Assessment
7 October 2026
Highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) continues to circulate widely in wild birds and cause outbreaks in poultry and other animals across Europe. Despite extensive circulation, human infections remain rare and no human cases have been confirmed in the EU/EEA to date.
Considering this, ECDC assesses the risk from A(H5N1) viruses circulating in Europe as low for the general population and low to moderate for people occupationally or otherwise exposed to infected animals or contaminated environments.
- Twenty-seven of 30 EU/EEA countries responded to the survey on influenza A(H5) vaccination in humans – national plans and implementation status in EU/EEA. Eight countries reported having national A(H5) vaccination recommendations in place, eight were currently developing them, and 11 had no plans at the time of the survey.
- Implementation of the plans remained limited: five countries had started vaccination campaigns (Austria, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Portugal) and three planned to do so within one year. Priority groups most commonly included in the cohort to be vaccinated were veterinarians and animal-health staff, culling teams, laboratory staff and workers in farming and the poultry sector.
- Most countries reported that they are monitoring or planning to monitor vaccine uptake; the majority through immunisation registries.
- Reported vaccine uptake in reporting countries was generally low outside laboratory settings, but data were incomplete and not comparable across countries.
- Overall, results were heterogeneous in the EU/EEA due to variation in national recommendations, implementation plans, delivery arrangements and uptake monitoring. For preparedness purposes, countries would benefit from clearly defined programme objectives and scenario-based triggers, tested delivery pathways, targeted communication and uptake-monitoring plans.
In addition to the EU's purchase, over the past 3 years we've seen a number of other countries announced their intention to stockpile limited supplies of a pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccine, including:
All are quantities that might help protect those occupationally most at risk during an H5Nx outbreak, but the general population would likely have to wait 6 months or longer before large quantities of vaccine would be made available (see
Referral: SCI AM - A Bird Flu Vaccine Might Come Too Late to Save Us from H5N1).
At least that's the theory.
Whether we'll be ready to react to an actual human outbreak remains to be seen.
https://afludiary.blogspot.com/2026/10/ecdc-assessment-zoonotic-influenza-ah5.html
