Word: h5n1
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...about half its live wholesale markets, and culling 80,000 birds from farms near the outbreak's locus. York said Tuesday that there were no reports of humans sickened by the virus, and that the government had not yet determined whether the birds were infected with the potentially lethal H5N1 or a less virulent strain of influenza. (See pictures of the bird...
...about 20% in recent weeks. A specially appointed panel of doctors has examined the cases of the children who died in order to ascertain whether it the flu was the cause - and whether the flu strains circulating in Hong Kong were particularly deadly or showed any signs of the H5N1 bird flu virus. The panel found no evidence of H5N1; both children who died with confirmed cases of the flu had a common flu strain, and both are thought to have died from complicating factors - not the flu itself. (A third child's death has not yet been linked...
Public health experts are still worried, however, that the current flu outbreak will lead to even greater use of the antiflu drug Tamiflu. The powerful treatment has been proven particularly effective against H5N1 and has become widely prescribed in Hong Kong - it is increasingly available illegally, without prescription, in pharmacies - so resistance to the drug is growing fast here. Doctors say the overuse of Tamiflu is creating a manifold risk, not only of weakening a weapon against a potential bird flu outbreak, but also of helping to spread a virulent strain of drug-resistant common flu in the wider population...
...samples are from a strain of flu virus known as H1N1, a subtype of the influenza A virus: the regular run-of-the-mill seasonal flu, not the dreaded H5N1 avian flu that's prompted countries around the world to stockpile tens of millions of doses of Tamiflu. So how worried should people be about the prospect of drug-resistant strains of influenza A? Only modestly, says World Health Organization spokeswoman Sari Setiogi in Geneva. "Influenza A has been circulating for many years. It's not likely to cause a pandemic," she says. The patients who gave samples...
...week. But the main reason wasn't drug-resistance; it was simply a saturated market. As countries meet their targets for an anti-flu-pandemic Tamiflu stockpile, global demand for the drug is tapering off. For now, at least, those national stockpiles still offer an advantage: To date, the H5N1 bird flu shows only limited resistance to the drug...