Word: h5n1
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Health officials have long been worried that the next deadly global epidemic--a slate wiper, as epidemiologists call it--would be a new kind of deadly flu to which humans have no resistance. And since the 1960s, their fears have been focused on the H5N1 virus, a bird pathogen that is generally harmless in its host species (ducks and other wildfowl) but extremely deadly when contracted by chickens. It was H5N1 that struck Hong Kong in 1997, where it went straight from chickens to humans. Authorities quickly killed 1.4 million birds, and although six people died, the disease never managed...
What scares scientists most about H5N1 is that someone eventually will be stricken by the bird flu and a human flu at the same time, allowing the viruses to swap genetic material. The resulting hybrid could be both deadly and virulent. Even if it weren't immediately contagious, it could quickly evolve. A study published last week in the journal Science reported that the SARS virus mutated in a matter of months from a form that could infect only 3% of people who came in contact with it to one that infected 70%. Once it mutated, SARS quickly spread around...
What is it? Avian flu is a form of influenza that often kills domesticated poultry such as chickens and turkeys. Some strains of bird flu can make humans sick, too. The most dangerous is H5N1, which has caused at least 10 human deaths during the current outbreak. H5N1 first jumped the species barrier from birds to humans in Hong Kong in 1997, when six out of 18 infected people died. The fear is that H5N1 could combine with a human-flu strain to create a deadly virus that's so contagious it could cause a human pandemic...
...current virus sweeping Asia keeps mutating and appears resistant to these cheaper drugs. It's believed that pricier drugs such as Tamiflu will prove more effective, but supplies are limited. Meanwhile, it may take at least six months to produce a vaccine that's effective against H5N1...
...there could be an even more ominous disease vector at work?or in flight. For years, the greatest fear of many influenza experts has been the possibility that the H5N1 strain would infect migratory birds. Since huge amounts of virus are shed in bird feces, such an epidemic among migratory birds would mean death raining down from the sky in the form of H5N1 virus. In November and December of 2002, there were numerous migratory-waterfowl deaths due to H5N1 in Hong Kong's Penfold and Kowloon parks. Mysteriously, when further screenings of migratory birds were conducted immediately after...