Author: Ed Hutchinson, Professor, MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, University of Glasgow

Coronaviruses with their telltale spike proteins. Jezper/Shutterstock.com The world is full of animal viruses, and we’re pretty sure that one of them will cause the next pandemic. To prevent pandemics, we need to predict which of the vast number of animal viruses are most likely to infect humans. A new study, published in Nature, sets […]

Aschmidtyphotographer/Shutterstock.com The first human case of H9N2 influenza virus (bird flu) has been reported in Europe. A human infection was recorded by the Italian Ministry of Health on March 25, 2026. As an influenza virologist, I can explain what this means and why I am not particularly worried by it – yet. What do we […]

Virus snowflakes. Ed Hutchinson, MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, CC BY-SA Viruses, as we all know, are invisibly small things that make us sick. But is that the whole story? Zoom in close enough and you’ll discover the complex, unseen world of viruses. Some do make us sick, but many others simply exist […]

H5N1 bird flu has infected growing numbers of people worldwide in recent years, but this week saw something new: the first recorded human case of an H5N5 avian influenza virus. What is this virus and how concerned about it should we be? What happened? In early November, a resident of Grays Harbor, a county on […]