ELF -- just the money quotes
Robert Webster of St. Jude's told a meeting on biosecurity in Lyon, France in March that his lab has found that H5N1 grows well in pigs, making hybridisation theoretically possible. But it might not get far - infected pigs, Webster told New Scientist, do not pass H5N1 to each other. This means relatively few pigs will catch it.
Poultry may be more important for the virus's evolution. And this week Vietnam announced that it had found H5N1 infection in 71% of farmed ducks in the crowded Mekong Delta, where there have been many cases of human infection.
Ducks seem able to harbour the virus without showing symptoms, and in Vietnam many live in the open where they can spread the virus. So far Vietnam has not vaccinated poultry, but the Vietnamese agriculture ministry announced in March that it would start vaccinating ducks in the Mekong delta for H5N1 flu in April. |
