UCLA

H6N1 influenza A is an avian virus but in 2013 infected a human in Taiwan. We studied the phylogeography of avian origin H6N1 viruses in the Influenza Research Database and the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data EpiFlu Database in order to characterize their recent evolutionary spread. Our results suggest that the H6N1 virus that infected a human in Taiwan is derived from a diversity of avian strains of H6N1 that have circulated for at least seven years in this region. Understanding how geography impacts the evolution of avian influenza could allow disease control efforts to focus on areas that pose the greatest risk to humans. The serious human infection with a known avian influenza virus underscores the zoonotic potential of diverse avian strains of influenza, and the need for comprehensive influenza surveillance in animals and the value of public sequence databases including GISAID and the IRD.