AvianBirdsFlu.com: key facts about Avian Influenza commonly called Bird Flu that created world health crises rivaled only by Plague and HIV.
Home Page News Virus Pandemic Vaccine Sympotms Links H5N1 Strain Forum	The bird's flu has forked. Or it was doubled? The virus of the bird's flu has genetically forked. And both varieties H5N1 have already infected birds in Europe. Now experts should develop one more vaccine, and epidemiologists - to be ready for a pandemic. On Monday at the international conference on infectious diseases which is taking place in Atlanta (USA), the American scientists have declared, that it will be at least twice more difficult to cope with the pandemic of the virus H5N1 now , than they had guessed before. The matter is that researchers have found out one thing: since the time when the first infected with the strain H5N1 people appeared in the world, the virus has transformed into two separate varieties. Experts of the US Center under the control and prevention of diseases could draw this conclusion after they had analyzed more than 300 samples of the virus H5N1 allocated from tests of infected birds and people during the period from 2003 to summer of 2005." In 2003 we had only one virus genetically dangerous for a man which potentially could cause pandemic. Now we have two viruses", - informed the expert of center Rebecca Garten. The first variety caused infection of people in 2003-2004 in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. According to the World Health organization in 2003 three people were infected with a bird's flu and three of them died. In 2004 the quantity grew up to 46 infected people and 32 victims. The second variety which was called a "cousin" of the first variety, caused a flash in Indonesia in 2005 (only in this country 11 people died because of this variety of the bird's flu and 17 were infected, all in the world 41 infected people died last year and 95 people had been ill with this virus). As Garten explained, though both viruses have one "ancestor" they are genetically various. " It considerably complicates the creation of a vaccine ", - the head of the flu branch of the center under the control over diseases Nancy Coks informed. However she specified, that all viruses of the flu change easily enough, and H5N1 didn't become the exception. Thus occurrence of the second variety doesn't accelerate the mutation of the virus into strain which can be transferred from a human to a human, so it does not approach pandemic. " But it makes the preparation to pandemic more labour-consuming", - Coks noticed. As Reuters informs, the US department of health services has already admitted the existence of two varieties of the virus and has approved the creation of a new vaccine against the second H5N1. And though viruses and vaccines will be twice more, researchers hope, that an inoculation though partly, but will protect from the flu. " We consider that the vaccine from one variety will potentially be able to lower danger of disease from the second one", - Coks explained . The researcher noticed that the virus allocated out of died birds in Europe, also showed the presence of two genetic varieties. That is inoculation of birds with only one kind of a vaccine, probably, won't be able to affect the spreading of the flu effectively.