Synthetic vaccines company Replikins Ltd announced on Friday that Dr Samuel Bogoch spoke at the 3rd annual Chernack Conference at Boston University School of Medicine on Crisis & Emergency Management and highlighted advance warning of current H5N8 outbreaks.

According to the company's Dr Bogoch, at least two million chickens have been lost to date in the current H5N8 outbreak in South Africa, creating economic havoc.

Since 1983, the molecular evolution of H5N8 had abundant mutations in 2013, 2014 and 2015 in the specific gene Replikin structures, producing new strains preceding the outbreak in South Africa. These conserved and new Replikins could have been used over the past four years to synthesize and test potentially preventive vaccines and blockers as done successfully for H5N1 (Avian Diseases: December 2009, Vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 613-617).

The company added that H5N8 has not yet created a pandemic in humans, as have three of its close lethal flu relatives: H1N1, H2N2 and H3N2. H1N1 produced two pandemics, in 1918 and 2009, causing millions of deaths in humans. H5N1 has passed to humans and killed 82% of individuals it infected in Indonesia, but like H5N8, has not as yet produced a pandemic in humans. H5N8 has produced loss of lives in chickens and economic chaos in in Ireland, US, China, Korea, Belgium as well as South Africa.

With over three million Replikins automated analyses of 18 virus genes, one to four years advance notice of the outbreaks consistently provided time for both public health preparations and the synthesis and testing of blockers and vaccines. The Gates Foundation and the World Bank have urged more new efforts in advance of the outbreak.