NEWS: Confirmation- Romania's Bird Flu Is Deadly H5N1 Strain

News is currently breaking stating that lab tests in Britain have confirmed that the outbreak of bird Flu in Romania is in fact the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease. Telephone confirmation from London has been received at the Romanian veterinary and animal health authority, according to spokesperson Alina Monea, showing that the strain of the disease involved in the outbreak is H5N1. This news comes less than 24 hours after Romania's bordering neighbour Turkey announced that the Bird Flu strain found in that country, which has so far killed 1800 birds at a migration reserve, was in fact also H5N1.



More news as the story progresses. This is disasterous for the efforts to control the spread of the virus. It seems it has now got a firm hold on Europe.


[edit on 15-10-2005 by Mayet]

There really wasnt an effort to control the spread of this virus. Britain wont even keep its commerical population of birds indoors because they would lose their "free range status". The birds identified as being in close proximity to the Siberian lake where infected birds were found should of been culled to prevent spreading.

There would of been no guarantee that it would of prevented the spread but there was a chance it might of slowed it down. It was better than letting them just spread the disease like is currently occuring. Now we're going to face the consequences.

One question: If the disease does mutate, and is able to transfer from human to human, does the drug Tamiflu work against the new mutation? Or is there an alternative as of yet to fight it?

Originally posted by Grommer
One question: If the disease does mutate, and is able to transfer from human to human, does the drug Tamiflu work against the new mutation? Or is there an alternative as of yet to fight it?

In theory, Tamiflu is an anti viral agent that seems to work well with Influenza A. Because it is not a vaccine it may be of benifit. Now Roche has shown in their esarch that they did see some resistant strains of influenza to the drug it hopefully will work.

Vaccines use weak live viruses or dead ones to trick the immune system into developing antibodies to the disease. That way the immune system already has had an exposure and knows exactly how to fight the disease from the start.

and the bird flu is showing resistance to tamiflu increasingly. At the moment it has only been announced that the bird flu strains out ofChina are resistant but until a pandemic no one really knows for sure.