Via C-News, Helen Branswell reports: New bird flu variant not stronger. Excerpt:
The emergence of a new variant of H5N1 avian flu viruses doesn't appear to raise or lower the risk the virus poses to humans, officials of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization said Tuesday.
Representatives of the UN agencies charged with animal and human health issues held a teleconference Tuesday to discuss the discovery of the new subgroup of viruses. The new variant, called a Fujian-like virus, was reported Monday in the scientific journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The newly described subgroup of viruses could pose challenges for containing H5N1 in poultry because vaccines being used in China -- where it emerged -- may not protect domestic birds against this variant.
But the pattern of human cases with these viruses is similar to that seen with viruses spreading in Indonesia, or those that caused human infections in Vietnam in 2004 and 2005, said Michael Perdue of the WHO. The variant is responsible for recent human cases in China and Thailand.
"If you look at the mortality rate and the disease, the Fujian-strain infections are no different," said Perdue, a senior scientist with the WHO's global influenza program.
"So there's no reason to lead us to believe that this sublineage is acting any differently than any of the other sublineages in terms of affecting humans."
