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| Home Front: Economy |
| Asian bird flu confirmed in migratory fowl now |
| 2005-07-07 |
| Take care if you are travelling in Asia ... and be concerned about its spread further. The deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu has been found for the first time in migratory birds. The discovery in China, published in scientific journals today, raises fears that wild birds could spread the virus to regions that have not been affected so far notably south Asia. Two scientific teams in China and Hong Kong have confirmed that the H5N1 strain, which has killed 54 people and tens of millions of chickens in south-east Asia, was responsible for the current flu outbreak among geese and other wildfowl at the remote Qinghai Lake in the west of the country. About 6,000 birds have died there since the end of April. âThe occurrence of highly pathogenic H5N1 infection in migrant waterfowl indicates that this virus has the potential to be a global threat,â wrote George Gao and colleagues at the Institute of Microbiology, Beijing, in the journal Science. âLake [Qinghai] is a breeding centre for migrant birds that congregate from south-east Asia, Siberia, Australia and New Zealand.â The other team, led by Yi Guan of the University of Hong Kong, wrote in Nature that the discovery was a particular threat to India, which has not so far been affected by H5N1. In September large flocks of bar-headed geese will migrate to the south Asian subcontinent from Qinghai. Genetic analysis of the virus taken from dead birds at the lake showed a close relationship to the H5N1 virus that has infected people in Thailand and Vietnam, but there have been some slight mutations. Dr Guan and colleagues said the analysis suggested that the virus was introduced just once to Qinghai, probably from poultry hundreds of kilometres away in southern China. Although the outbreak could burn itself out, the large migratory bird population at the lake made this unlikely, they wrote. Before the Qinghai outbreak, the H5N1 virus had occurred only sporadically in wild birds close to poultry farms. Ian Jones, a virologist at Reading University in the UK, said: âIt was expected to spread to migratory birds at some point but it is bad news that this has now happened.â It was impossible to predict the impact of the development on the chance of H5N1 mutating into a form capable of causing a human pandemic, Prof Jones said. The optimistic view was that as the virus spread through the bird population it would become less virulent. |
| Posted by:too true |
| #1 Sheesh. China and Southeast Asia are going to be the death of us yet. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-07-07 15:02 |