Could an algorithm predict the next pandemic?

In February 2021, seven Russian poultry-farm workers were reported to have been infected with H5N8 avian influenza. This subtype of bird flu had never been known to infect people before, and the virus's genetic sequence was quickly uploaded to the genetic data repository GISAID. For Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC, it presented an opportunity. "I immediately thought, 'I want to run this through FluLeap'," he says. FluLeap is a machine-learning algorithm that uses sequence data to classify influenza viruses as either avian or human.