Avian influenza: perfect storm now gathering?
The avian influenza virus H5N1 has recently been making headlines, none of them reassuring. On Feb 21, Julie Gerberding, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called avian influenza a “very ominous” threat to human beings. Shigeru Omi, WHO Western Pacific Regional Director, said the world is in “the gravest possible danger of a pandemic”. The disease has killed about 46 people, but if the virus mutates sufficiently to enable sustained human-to-human transmission, that number could rise to levels that would dwarf the millions killed in the influenza pandemics of 1918, 1957, and 1968. A report in the Feb 24 issue of Nature suggested that cases are being under-reported: some Vietnamese patients with influenza-like symptoms, but initially cleared of having avian influenza on testing, were later found to carry the H5N1 virus at reanalysis; and some ill persons without typical influenza symptoms also had the virus. The bad news here is that the disease might be much
