US prepares to test vaccine for bird flu

February 25, 2005|Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The federal government is getting ready to test a bird flu vaccine and stockpiling both vaccine and antiviral drugs as the threat grows that a deadly strain of avian influenza will begin spreading from Asia.

Two million doses of vaccine are being stored in bulk form for possible emergency use and to test whether it maintains its potency, officials said yesterday.

United Nations officials warned that the Asian bird flu outbreak poses the ''gravest possible danger" of becoming a global pandemic.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said this week that the virus could mutate into a form that can pass from one human to another, but she said the United States is not on the brink of an epidemic. The flu has affected poultry in eight Asian countries, with 45 human deaths among people who caught the illness, a strain of flu known as H5N1.

So far, humans appear to have caught this flu from chickens and other poultry, and the virus is not known to have spread from person to person. The deadly flu of 1918, which killed from 20 million to 50 million people worldwide, did not appear suddenly but mutated gradually into the deadlier form, Gerberding explained.

In Vietnam yesterday, health and animal specialists said any long-term strategy for controlling bird flu must address the role of wild birds, including ducks and other waterfowl, as major culprits in the spread of the deadly virus.