Posted by rahrens_1 on August 31st 2011 at 08:55 am
New Bird Flu Variant Of H5N1 Moving To India
News out that a new variant of the bird flu (H5N1.2.3.2.1) virus has shown up in China and Vietnam and is now moving into India. The difference with this variant is that it can evade all existing vaccines that have been developed to fight H5N1 to date.
The concern is it isn’t known how many mirgrating birds winter in India from China that could carry it without Indian authorities being aware they have a serious problem.
My question would be how many other countries do birds from China/Vietnam migrate to? Given we are so overdue for a pandemic it would seem to only be a matter of time before one of these variants takes a strong foothold in humans. We can close all the borders we want but if the virus can simply fly past us we are quiet limited in our ability to halt it’s spread.
Given the fragile economic state a nasty bird flu could be an economic ‘coup de gras’. Imagine the impact of borders being closed around the world in the current economic environment…
See full article here.
