Word: h5n1
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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...
...appearance of avian flu in July, and the apparent Vietnamese cover-up, would mean that this virus has had months to roll through the chicken population, possibly mutating and becoming more pathogenic as it goes. The culprit this time is the same as in Hong Kong in 1997: the H5N1 influenza virus. Historically, this virus has wreaked havoc mainly on poultry. Among chickens, the disease manifests itself as a hemorrhagic fever, turning a pen of healthy birds into a bloody mass of goop and feathers within 24 hours. Since the 1960s, each reported appearance of the disease has drawn...
...does a chicken flu become a human flu? The answer is in the RNA of the virus itself. Influenza viruses are known as shape-shifters, possessing the rare ability to swap proteins with other influenza viruses to create, essentially, new influenza viruses. As long as an H5N1 virus stays in its host species?ducks?then there is little risk of a human pandemic arising. But once that virus has infected chickens, then the chances of jumping to human beings, usually through contact with chicken feces, rise considerably. In humans, the virus is more likely to swap proteins with a human...
...with China. The mainland was the source of Hong Kong's previous outbreaks, and Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department officials in the city sometimes turn back containers of chickens and ducks that have tested positive for antibodies to avian flu. China refuses to officially acknowledge that it has an H5N1 problem. But as recently as last March, according to a document obtained by TIME, China's Ministry of Health was requesting from the WHO H5N1 reagents, which are used to test for presence of antibodies to the virus. That would indicate, at the very least, that China suspected this type...
...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...