|
Alarm at human bird flu cluster
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is extremely worried about a cluster of recent human deaths from the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu. Seven people from the same family in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, died from the disease earlier this month. Peter Cordingley, a WHO spokesman, said there was no sign of diseased poultry in the immediate area. Investigators are looking into the possibility that the virus was spread between humans, Mr Cordingley said. But he emphasised that there was no indication the virus had mutated. Experts are worried that if it does mutate, it could become more easily transmitted between humans. There are several other points of interest the article doesn't cover. Yesterday, here was another confirmed bird flu death in Bandung, Java, which has been a hotspot for bird flu cases. There is a lot of talk in the bird flu forums that there is a mammalian vector involved, possibly cats. The 'the virus hasn't mutated' statement is pure fluff for the masses. The bird flu virus mutates all the time and WHO actually said 'there are no significant mutations', which is another way of saying 'we have no idea how significant the 'mutations' that have occured, are'. Most significant of all, in Sumatra we appear to have a chain of 3 or 4 H2H transmissions. I speculated elsewhere that a (i.e. just one) chain of 10 H2H transmissions is required to start the pandemic. Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-24 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=153587 |