05/05 | Live H5N1 avian flu virus can be isolated in the blood of its human victims

Link to yesterday's thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=196089

Human Cases

Since January, 2004 WHO has reported human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) in the following countries:

* East Asia and the Pacific:
o Cambodia
o China
o Indonesia
o Thailand
o Vietnam

* Europe & Eurasia:
o Azerbaijan
(see update)
o Turkey

* Near East:
o Egypt
o Iraq

For additional information about these reports, visit the
World Health Organization Web Site.

Updated April 3, 2006

Animal Cases

Since December 2003, avian influenza A (H5N1) infections in poultry or wild birds have been reported in the following countries:

* Africa:
o Burkina Faso
o Cameroon
o Niger
o Nigeria
o Sudan

* East Asia & the Pacific:
o Cambodia
o China
o Hong Kong (SARPRC)
o Indonesia
o Japan
o Laos
o Malaysia
o Mongolia
o Myanmar (Burma)
o Thailand
o Vietnam

* South Asia:
o Afghanistan
o India
o Kazakhstan
o Pakistan

* Near East:
o Egypt
o Iraq (H5)
o Iran
o Israel
o Jordan

* Europe & Eurasia:
o Albania
o Austria
o Azerbaijan
o Bosnia & Herzegovina
o Bulgaria
o Croatia
o Czech Republic (H5)
o Denmark
o France
o Georgia
o Germany
o Greece
o Hungary
o Italy
o Poland
o Romania
o Russia
o Serbia & Montenegro
o Slovak Republic
o Slovenia
o Sweden
o Switzerland
o Turkey
o Ukraine
o United Kingdom


For additional information about these reports, visit the
World Organization for Animal Health Web Site.

Updated April 24, 2006

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/outbreaks/current.htm

WHO, Avian Flu Timeline in .pdf: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/timeline.pdf

Live bird flu virus found in victim's blood​

HELEN BRANSWELL

Canadian Press

Toronto — Live H5N1 avian flu virus can be isolated in the blood of its human victims, a finding that will be reported by Thai researchers in an upcoming issue of a scientific journal.

Evidence that H5N1 can spread via the bloodstream to parts of the body not normally attacked by influenza viruses confirms this particular flu strain poses special challenges for both patient treatment and infection control, experts say. It also raises theoretical questions about the safety of the donated blood system should H5N1 trigger a pandemic.

“This is the first report of a high amount of (H5N1) virus in blood in humans,” University of Ottawa virologist Earl Brown said of the findings, outlined in a letter slated for publication in the June issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

“That's a bit surprising because blood is poisonous to flu virus. If you take any blood ... and add it to flu, you kill it (the virus). This showed that the virus was living in the blood,” said Dr. Brown, who was not an author of the letter.

While some types of viruses spread well in blood, cases of viremia — viral infection in the bloodstream — have only rarely been reported with influenza.

The researchers — from Chulalongkorn University, Srinakharinwirot University and the National Institute of Animal Health, all in Bangkok — reported on the case of a five-year-old Thai boy who died of H5N1 infection Dec. 7.

A blood sample drawn on the day he died contained high levels of live virus.

The finding helps to explain reports that some humans with H5N1 experience what is called systemic infection, with the flu virus spreading beyond its normal home in the respiratory track to organs that would typically go untouched by human flu viruses.

Other research groups have reported finding traces of H5N1's RNA in blood. Those findings were highly suggestive that the virus was using the bloodstream to disseminate throughout the body, but were not strong enough evidence to rule out that spread was actually occurring via other routes such as the lymphatic system.

Researchers at Oxford University's clinical research unit at the Hospital for Tropical Medicine in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, for instance, reported last year on a boy whose H5N1 infection spread to his brain, causing encephalitis.

The lead author of that report, virologist Menno de Jong, said his group has found viral RNA in the blood of about half of the H5N1 patients in which they've looked for it.

“It was really surprising for influenza, because the case reports of human influenza and viremia are so rare,” he said from Ho Chi Minh City.

“It's probably quite common in H5N1 infected patients.”

That poses challenges for treating patients infected with H5N1 because if the virus is spreading through the blood, so too must drugs that aim to combat the infection.

Currently there are only four flu antivirals on the market and one, zanamivir (sold as Relenza) is administered to the respiratory tract by inhalation. The drug would need to be formulated in an injectable form to be useful for systemic infection, Dr. de Jong said.

It also raises concerns about infection control for health-care workers and laboratory scientists coming in contact with the blood of H5N1 patients — although precautions against contact with blood are widespread as a consequence of years of experience with blood-borne infections like HIV and hepatitis C.

“I think for this kind of flu, infection control measures should include all bodily secretions, basically,” Dr. de Jong said.

The findings also raise questions about whether blood transfusions could be a source of infection if H5N1 were to become a pandemic strain.

Canadian Blood Services and the American Red Cross have been studying the issue, but currently it is believed that the risk is more theoretical than real, because influenza's incubation period is so short. Once people develop symptoms they would be unlikely to want to give blood and would probably be turned away if they showed up to a blood-donor clinic.

"From the blood-donor and blood-supply point of view, the issue would be whether there's virus in the blood before the patient becomes ill,” said Dr. Jeffrey McCullough, who holds an American Red Cross professorship in transfusion medicine at the University of Minnesota.

“Once you've got somebody that's sick, of course, they wouldn't be acceptable as a blood donor,” he said.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...fluu0504/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home

U.S. bird flu study predicts millions of deaths, billions in losses
Planners expect many would have to be treated at home -- other studies more dire​

- Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, May 4, 2006

A third of Americans could become ill and overburdened hospitals might have to set up clinics in hotels and other public buildings to handle the sickened masses if a flu pandemic hits the United States.

Schools and churches might close. Air travel would be limited to emergencies only. Parents could temporarily lose their day care.

If the avian flu turns into a global epidemic, it could disable the U.S. economy, resulting in a loss of $600 billion of national income.

These scenarios, which at least one public health expert said aren't even the worst case, are part of a detailed, 234-page report released Wednesday by the Bush administration.

"This plan goes much deeper in identifying more specifically what needs to happen in a pandemic, in just about every area you could think of, from human health to animal health to infrastructure," said Jeff Levi, executive director of Trust for America's Health, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group that follows government disaster prepare plans. "I think it is a further demonstration of how serious the government is taking a potential pandemic. It's an unprecedented level of detail in terms of its planning and performance."

The report cites avian flu, the dreaded H5N1 strain that is carried by birds and has infected 205 people worldwide, as a potential source for the next pandemic, although it has yet to mutate into a form that can be spread from person to person. The report warns that even if the avian flu never becomes a global health threat, "another novel influenza virus will emerge ... and threaten an unsuspecting human population."

Based on records from the last major pandemic, in 1918, the report projects that a modern flu pandemic could infect 30 percent of the global population -- and up to 40 percent of children in schools -- and kill up to 2 percent of those sickened. In the United States, that would mean up to 2 million deaths.

The report calls for stockpiling enough antiviral medication to treat 75 million people in the United States, and for developing a vaccine to immunize 20 million. Creating and distributing those treatments would fall to the federal government -- but most of the burden of health care and containment would fall to state and local governments, which are hastily coming up with their own plans to survive a pandemic.

"This isn't Hurricane Katrina, where it's just in Louisiana, or the Northridge earthquake, where it's just in Los Angeles. It's everywhere at the same time," said George Rutherford, director of the Institute for Global Health in San Francisco. "The federal government won't have the resources to treat everybody."

Health experts said Wednesday that hospitals are likely to have the toughest time keeping up. Every hospital would run out of beds -- possibly in just a couple of weeks. Teaching the public how to care for the sick at home would be crucial, they said.

At Stanford University Medical Center, emergency planners said they could use dorms on the university campus -- where classes would likely be canceled and students sent home -- or nearby hotels as clinics for flu patients.

"Initially, you determine how you can surge within your own institution by increasing patient capacity and decreasing your patient load. And then you look beyond your four walls to developing influenza care facilities," said Eric Weiss, chair of the hospital's disaster preparedness committee. "We'd need to triage people and those who didn't need hospital beds would be cared for at home."

Amy Nichols, director of infection control and hospital epidemiology at UCSF Medical Center, said the hospital has already contacted sources to make sure emergency supplies are packed and ready to be trucked from warehouses in a major outbreak. But with hospital staffs sickened by the flu and a shortage of beds, she, like Weiss, said it will be up to communities to take care of their own.

"I know in many areas the neighborhoods are developing plans for getting organized, so there's a system of identifying who has ill people in their homes," Nichols said.

State public health officials hope to have a detailed strategy for handling a flu epidemic by summer, when it might need further revisions based on the new federal plan, said Mark Horton, chief deputy director of the state Department of Health Services

The health services department has requested funds to buy 270,000 doses of antiviral medication, but with the federal report insisting that communities need enough doses to treat 25 percent of the population, Horton said that number will have to be revised. And he said it would be at least a year before even 270,000 were available.

In the Bay Area, hospitals and public health agencies have been working for months or years on community response plans to a flu epidemic. San Francisco, for instance, hopes to have a complete pandemic flu plan by the end of the year, said Mary Ellen Carroll with the Department of Public Health.

The federal plan released Wednesday suggested that businesses look for ways to keep employees away from each other -- letting people work from home, for example, or creating staggered shifts. People will be encouraged to wear masks, and to voluntarily quarantine themselves if someone in their household is sick.

In a worst-case scenario, Rutherford said, a pandemic would mimic any other natural disaster, only with a protracted time of suffering and recovery.

"Stores might be closed. Gas stations might be closed. If everyone's sick, who will restock the ATM machines with cash? You might not be able to buy stuff like you can now," Rutherford said.

Even borrowing necessary supplies from neighbors might not be an option, he said. Who's going to open their door in the middle of a deadly epidemic?

"If bird flu crosses over to humans, there will be a lot of people sick," Rutherford said. "As the public health measures start to ratchet up, events will be canceled and services closed, and people are going to start staying in their houses. Nothing like that has ever really happened before."

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/04/MNG76IKCPF1.DTL

Closed Societies Open About H5N1 Bird Flu -UN Official​

UNITED NATIONS (AP)--The top U.N. official tracking the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus said Thursday even nations accustomed to controlling all information understand that obfuscation could hurt their economies and their reputations.

"My experience from all countries is that on this issue, they have decided that openness is the best policy," Dr. David Nabarro said. "I have had no evidence, to me at least, of systematic hiding of this kind of information by any country."

Nabarro was responding to a question about reports that some countries, including China and Myanmar, have sought to limit journalists from reporting about bird flu.

Last week, Nabarro said bird flu has hit 45 countries, killed more than 100 people and seems to be spreading quickly. The virus has led to the deaths of some 200 million birds and has impoverished millions of small poultry farmers.

So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds, but experts fear the virus will mutate into a form that easily spreads from person to person, potentially sparking a global pandemic.

Nabarro said he was reassured that there was no evidence recently that the H5N1 virus had mutated into a form more likely to be transmitted between humans.

"Each day this kind of insight appears, I am reassured because truly this is the good news," Nabarro said. "The bad news would be anything that suggests that human to human transmission was getting any closer. So no news is good news on that one."

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/N...eadlinereturnpage=http://www.international.na

China

China confirms bird flu in remote far west ​

20 minutes ago

China on Friday confirmed an outbreak of bird flu among wild birds in a remote area of far-western Qinghai province.

The outbreak was confirmed by the national bird flu laboratory on Wednesday, and the number of dead wild birds had risen to 123 by Thursday, the Ministry of Agriculture said on its Web site.

An outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in China's Qinghai Lake last May killed thousands of birds and that particular strain has since been found in affected places in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

China has reported at least 18 human infections of the H5N1 strain, 12 of which have been fatal. It has reported more than 30 outbreaks of bird flu in poultry across a dozen provinces over the past year.

Experts fear that bird flu could mutate into a form where it could pass easily among humans, potentially triggering a pandemic in which millions could die.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060505/wl_nm/birdflu_china_dc

Serious H5N1 Bird Flu Surveillance Flaws

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/05050601/H5N1_Serious_Flaws.html


Recombinomics Commentary
May 5, 2006

``The peak transmission either in poultry or to humans is in the winter months,'' said Robert Webster, the Rosemary Thomas professor at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

The above comments on avian influenza infections raise serious questions about the surveillance of H5N1 bird flu worldwide. The data from Britain is particularly striking because the detail indicate testing was throughout the peak period in the fall and winter, yet virtually no avian influenza was found in dead or living wild birds.

Avian influenza in birds is common. Testing in Canada of young mallards in August, 2005 found low pathogenic H5 throughout southern Canada. H5 was detected in 24% of the birds tested in British Columbia and as many as 50% of the tested birds had some strain of avian influenza.

Test results from Britain indicate samples were collected throughout the winter months. Only two positives were obtained from live birds, although over 3000 birds were screened. Attempts to isolate virus from the two positives failed.

In dead birds, there was one positive, H5N1, in a whooper swan in Scotland. Again over 3000 dead birds were tested.

Positive data on 3 birds out of 7000 indicates the surveillance methodology was seriously flawed. These flaws were further supported by the H7N3 outbreak in at least farms near Norwich. No H7 was detected in the surveillance samples, again highlight a high rate of false negatives.

Collection and storage flaws may have contibuted to the false negatives reported by DEFRA. However, false nagatives can be generated at many points in the collection and storage process. Countries reporting no positievs in thousands of samples have serious issues.

Many countries in Europe detected H5N1, indicating H5N1 had migrated into the region in the fall of 2005. As indicated by the positive whooper swan in Scotland, H5N1 was in long range migratory birds and therefore would have spread widely throughout the area. However, many European countries still claim no H5N1 infections. No country, other than Russia has detected H5N1 in live wild birds.

These data further demonstrate that the enhanced surveillance in Europe and throughout the world is seriously flawed. The reports of false negatives do little to blunt the spread of H5N1. Countries testing thousands of birds and finding no avian influenza have a serious sensitivity and selection problem.

Issues of false negatives in H5N1 have been obvious since early 2004. The failure to adequately address the failed surveillance remains scandalous.

http://www.charleston.net/stories/?newsID=85506&section=business



Friday, May 05, 2006 - Last Updated: 9:43 AM

Sales of emergency supplies continue to boom
Fear of flu pandemic has dealers scrambling to fill orders

By JIM GRAHAM
Associated Press

HEBER CITY, Utah ? Harry R. Weyandt worries about a deadly flu pandemic reaching the United States for a different reason than most people: It would overwhelm his business.

There's no pandemic yet, and bird flu hasn't shown up in North America. But the staff at Weyandt's disaster-preparedness store is already scrambling to keep up with demand for everything from freeze-dried food to first-aid kits.

"What I'm not looking forward to is when they announce the first bird with avian flu is in the country," said Weyandt, owner of Nitro-Pak Preparedness Center Inc. in Heber City, about 35 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. "Because I know what will happen: It'll be crazy here."

Sales of emergency supplies are booming amid growing fears of a virulent global flu. Across the country, suppliers say they're already struggling to keep stock on hand, and it's taking longer to fill orders.

Phyllis Hopkins of Best Prices Storable Foods in Quinlan, Texas, said the business barely had a breather between the Gulf Coast hurricanes last year and bird flu warnings that intensified over the winter.

"We can't keep product in stock," said Hopkins, who runs the business with her husband, Bruce. "As soon as it comes in, it goes right off the shelf."

Pandemic panic buying means heady times for such businesses, which typically are family-owned and have no more than a handful of employees.

Weyandt said Nitro-Pak's March sales this year were up 600 percent from last year. He wouldn't reveal the company's finances but said total sales last year were in the "mid-seven figures."

Nitro-Pak's storefront warehouse looks like a cross between a Costco for survivalists and the post office before the Christmas holiday rush. Cardboard crates stacked floor-to-ceiling spill over with long-burning emergency candles, mini-rolls of toilet paper, waterproof matches and freeze-dried food ranging from eggs with bacon to blueberry cheesecake.

Scurrying between boxes, workers race to fill orders and load them onto heavy pallets that ship out every afternoon.

Even Weyandt's office, a sparsely furnished space not much bigger than a typical master bedroom, has desks overflowing with backpacks, compasses and space blankets.

A strain of bird flu has killed millions of birds and more than 100 people worldwide since 2003, mostly in Asia. While the deaths are blamed on close contact with sick poultry, experts are afraid the virus could mutate to spread easily among people.

If it arrives in North America, even businesses that stand to make a fortune say they're not prepared. "This industry is so teeny that if something happens to get everybody in a panic, it can't handle it," said Richard Mankamyer, owner of the Survival Center in McKenna, Wash.

In recent months, federal and state officials have been urging Americans to stock up on emergency supplies.

At Oregon Freeze Dry in Albany, Ore., orders for its No. 10-size cans, which hold eight to 17 servings of food each, have jumped tenfold since the Gulf Coast hurricanes last year, said Melanie Cornutt, assistant manager.

"We've gone through these spikes for 35 years now, but we don't try to keep a huge amount of inventory on hand because it's so hard to predict when the next one will hit," Cornutt said.

Industry veterans said the flu frenzy is nothing like the preparedness industry saw leading up to Y2K worries, when people feared computer systems would crash on Jan. 1, 2000.

In 1999, Nitro-Pak's staff grew to 80, working in a 44,000-square-foot warehouse, Weyandt said. Today, Nitro-Pak employs 12 people full-time in a 10,000-square-foot warehouse.

Among the company's biggest sellers is a 72-hour survival kit for two. The "executive" model, for $135.99, fits in a small backpack and is loaded with three dozen items, including high-energy food, water pouches, radio, tent, space blanket, pocket knife and even a deck of playing cards.

Bird Flu Spreads at Slower Rate, Hindered by Weather (Update3) ​

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu is spreading more slowly as warmer spring weather in the Northern Hemisphere reduces the virus's ability to survive in the environment.

Five outbreaks of the lethal H5N1 avian flu strain in poultry were reported to the World Organization for Animal Health in the week ended April 27, compared with an average of more than 40 a week in March. Diseased fowl raise the risk for humans and create opportunities for the virus to change into a form that may kill millions of people.

Scientists are counting on the slowdown in animal infections to reduce the number of human cases and fatalities. At least 29 people died of avian flu in the first three months of this year, marking the deadliest quarter yet, as the virus spread through Europe and Africa.

``The peak transmission either in poultry or to humans is in the winter months,'' said Robert Webster, the Rosemary Thomas professor at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Webster has studied influenza viruses for more than 40 years.

Tests have shown that H5N1 can survive in bird feces for at least 35 days at about 4 degrees Celsius (39 degrees Fahrenheit), the World Health Organization said in January.

``Maybe one of the more positive possibilities is that the summer is coming and the heat of Africa may be in our advantage,'' Webster told reporters yesterday in Singapore, where he addressed an avian flu forum sponsored by the Lancet medical journal. ``Maybe we will have a summer before it starts spreading more.''

114 Deaths

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 114 of 206 people infected since late 2003, including a 27-year-old woman from Egypt who died yesterday, the Geneva-based WHO said today.

The woman had been treated at the Abbasiya Hospital for double pneumonia since May 1, Egypt's government said on its Web site. She is the country's fifth H5N1 fatality and the first new case in a month.

``Her infection has been linked to exposure to diseased poultry during a recent visit to the Minufiyah governorate,'' the WHO said in a statement. ``While there, she stayed in a household where numerous chickens were slaughtered.''

In almost all human H5N1 cases, infection was caused by close contact with sick or dead birds, such as children playing with them, or adults butchering them or taking off the feathers, according to the Geneva-based WHO.

The WHO is tracking human cases in the event the virus becomes easily transmitted from person to person, sparking a pandemic such as the 1918 outbreak that killed as many as 50 million people worldwide.

Surviving Longer

Studies have shown the virus is capable of surviving longer in warmer conditions, Webster said. A strain of H5N1 collected from ducks in Hong Kong in 1997 was able to survive for as long as two days at 37 degrees Celsius, while the current viruses from Indonesia and Thailand take up to seven days to be destroyed at that temperature, he said.

Recarried in the blood, the virus might be more dangerous as a result of its ability to thrive in additional tissues, searchers in Thailand found live H5N1 in the blood of an infected patient. If researchers led by Salin Chutinimitkul of the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok said in a letter to a U.S. government journal.

The virus was isolated from the blood of a 5-year-old Thai boy who died in December, they said. Flu infection is normally limited to the lungs and lining of respiratory tissue.

U.K., Sudan

Initial avian outbreaks were reported in only four countries last month -- the U.K., Sudan, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast -- compared with 13 in March and 18 in February, according to the World Organization for Animal Health.

Outbreaks in Nigeria, Iraq and Turkey were caused by variants of an H5N1 strain found in China in April last year, when more than 6,000 wild birds died at the Qinghai Lake nature reserve, the WHO said in February.

The pattern of infections may be repeated this year. China's Agriculture Ministry said avian flu was found in migratory birds in a wetland in the western province of Qinghai, and has taken measures to prevent the spread to domestic poultry.

Health authorities in Qinghai's Yushu county, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of provincial capital Xining, reported the H5N1 strain killed 125 wild birds as of May 4, the ministry said in a statement on its Web site.

``In the past, this high pathogenic virus has not been perpetuated in wild birds,'' virologist Webster said in a May 2 interview. ``Now this high pathogenic virus is in wild birds. Is it going to be transmitted through the breeding cycle of the birds in Siberia, Australia, or wherever? That's what we are all watching out for.''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aW6Zhl5i8cG0#

Seven Russian villages still hit by bird flu​

http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?menu=1&id_issue=11511467

MOSCOW. May 5 (Interfax) - Seven villages in Russia have recently registered cases of bird flu, the Agriculture Ministry said, citing the Russian government veterinary watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor.

The villages are located in the southern Russian regions of Dagestan, Krasnodar and Volgograd, the ministry said.

The virus struck 11 regions in southern Russia in 2005, but hotbeds of the disease have been stamped out in the regions of Astrakhan, Rostov, Kalmykia, Adygeya, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya, and Stavropol.

Rosselkhoznadzor said 65.26 million doses of vaccine had been sent to stricken territories and that 32.92 million fowl had been vaccinated.

$1 Billion contract awarded to five firms to develop flu vaccine​

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/6476.html

WASHINGTON - The Health and Human Services Department announced Thursday that five companies have been awarded a total of $1 billion to develop a viable flu vaccine on US territory.

GlaxoSmithKline was given $274.8 million, MedImmune Inc.$169.5 million, Novartis $220.5 million, DynPort Vaccine Co. $41 million and Solvay Pharmaceuticals was awarded $298.6 million. All companies will work towards developing cell-based vaccines to combat seasonal influenza as well as a possible pandemic strain. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said that they would be replacing egg-based systems, which is quite a tedious process and non-productive.

"We have the opportunity to be the first generation that prepares for pandemic," Mr Leavitt said in a statement. "Today, we're taking a step closer to preparedness by investing more than $1 billion to develop vaccines more quickly and to produce them here in the United States." The main aim is to get ready for seasonal influenza and a possible bird flu epidemic. The H5N1 virus has only killed about 113 people till date, but the virus is very deadly.

Mr Leavitt added that the current capacity in the US was not enough to face a pandemic, "Our current capacity of egg-based influenza vaccine production is not sufficient to meet increased demands during an emergency," he said. "Accelerating the development of this vaccine technology and creating domestic capacity are critical to our preparedness efforts."

Experts fear that if the virus mutates to an easily transmissible form between humans, it could trigger a pandemic claiming millions of lives. The US has been getting ready for a pandemic and has framed a pandemic response plan wherein 75 million doses of antiviral drugs and 20 million doses of vaccines are to be stockpiled.

Commenting on winning a contract, Daniel Vasella, chief executive of Novartis said, "Novartis is pleased to be working with the US government to provide a reliable vaccine supply for US citizens and to further strengthen pandemic preparedness." The Basel, Switzerland based company added that "highly skilled researchers to set up one of the first flu cell culture manufacturing sites in the US".

Interactive Map: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/world/05/bird_flu_map/html/1.stm

That this ultra vicious deadly virus swims along robust in blood is VERY bad news.

If this thing goes H2H life, what is left of it, will change so drastically that it will be unrecognizable.

Treasure each normal day.

Link to tomorrows (5/6) Bird Flu thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=196361