Word: h5n1
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...convinced. That night he spoke with Albert Osterhaus, chairman of the virology department at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, where virologist Eric Claas had analyzed the suspect virus using a panel of reagents derived from flu strains isolated and maintained by Webster. Claas had first determined that the virus was H5N1, well before the CDC and Mill Hill. At the outset even he did not believe it. An H5 infection in humans was unheard of. He too assumed the H5 was a contaminant...
...investigation of the boy's illness lasted 2 1/2 weeks. By the time Fukuda left Hong Kong, his team had collected 2,000 blood samples. Antibodies indicating previous exposure to H5N1 were found in only nine samples, including one of the boy's classmates and one of his doctors. None of the nine recalled being ill. The fact that so few showed signs of exposure was concrete evidence that the virus was not particularly contagious...
From two deaths to millions may seem like a big leap. But this strain of influenza, called H5N1, though highly virulent in birds, has never before been known to attack humans. Since no human can count on having a natural immunity to what is essentially a bird virus, we could prove especially vulnerable to infection. First discovered in South African terns in 1961, H5N1 has already raced through poultry farms in southern China, killing caged fowl by the thousands...
...health officials can tell, every patient with H5N1 flu was infected directly by a chicken or some other feathered creature. As long as the virus is being passed bird to person, rather than person to person, it is not likely to spread beyond a few isolated cases...
Rather than wait to see what the H5N1 virus does next, U.S. scientists are racing to develop an effective vaccine, working in conjunction with doctors in Hong Kong and the pharmaceutical industry. It is not going to be easy. Influenza vaccines are usually grown in a chicken-egg medium, and H5N1 virus kills chicken eggs. "We've never been faced with this situation," says Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Even if scientists succeed in genetically engineering a form of the virus that does not kill the eggs, says Fauci, it will still...