Word: h5n1
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...Just as dead was any complacency on the Special Autonomous Region's part that it had solved its problems with bird flu. Health authorities worry about a repeat of 1997, when a strain of avian flu virus?H5N1?jumped directly from a bird to a human. Eighteen people were infected; six died. And the outbreak caused worldwide concern among health experts, who feared a possible global pandemic. Now, despite what is described as a first-class surveillance system for its poultry, Hong Kong is suffering its third lethal outbreak of bird flu in nearly five years. Flu experts...
...HONG KONG Bird Flu Hong Kong's government ordered the "depopulation" of the territory's estimated 1.2 million poultry as a new and highly virulent strain of avian flu was discovered. All market poultry stalls were shut down, and imports of live birds from China were halted. The new H5N1 virus is genetically different from the virus that led to the slaughter of all Hong Kong's poultry - and six human deaths...
...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...
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...