in Spain were also found to have exhibited the "PB2" viral mutation found when H5N1 jumped into pigs over a decade prior, adding to fears that farms could be acting as incubators and/or reservoirs of the virus, similar to the role of minks in SARS-CoV-2. As of January 2023, fifteen species of wild and captive mammals had become infected with H5N1 throughout the United States. A mass Caspian seal die-off in December 2022, with 700 infected seals found dead along the Caspian Sea coastline of Russia's Dagestan republic, worried researchers regarding the possibility that wild mammal-to-mammal spread had begun. Human infections As of May 2020, the WHO reported a total of 861 confirmed human cases which resulted in the deaths of 455 people since 2003. Human-to-human transmission (2023) Following the February 2023 H5N1 death of an 11-year-old girl from Cambodia's Prey Veng province, her father was confirmed positive for the virus and several close contacts also began showing signs of infection. On 24 February 2023, the WHO expressed concern that the virus had potentially begun to spread among humans and ordered the production of a new human vaccine for H5N1. Following the confirmed infections, the WHO began working with the Cambodian government to determine whether both individuals had gotten the virus directly from infected poultry or if it had indeed been a case of human-to-human transmission. Further sequencing determined that at least one of the two cases was from an older H5N1 clade, 2.3.2.1c, which had circulated as a common H5N1 strain in Cambodia for many years, rather than the more recent clade 2.3.4.4b, which had caused mass poultry deaths since 2020. This older clade had jumped to humans in the past yet hadn't previously resulted in any known human-to-human transmission. Society and culture H5N1 has had a significant effect on human society, especially the financial, political, social, and personal responses to both actual and predicted deaths in birds, humans, and other animals. Billions of dollars are being raised and spent to research H5N1 and prepare for a potential avian influenza pandemic. Over $10 billion have been spent and over 200 million birds have been killed to try to contain H5N1. People have reacted by buying less chicken, causing poultry sales and prices to fall. Many individuals have stockpiled supplies for a possible flu pandemic. International health officials and other experts have pointed out that many unknown questions still hover