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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (1976)	12/14/2003 11:06:44 AM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

New flu virus found in China By Rob Stein The Washington Post WASHINGTON -- While the start of this year's flu season has been especially wretched, flu experts say it is not the killer pandemic they have been worrying about for years. They are much more anxious about a little-noticed case that emerged last week in Hong Kong, where a 5-year-old boy was infected with a bird flu virus, because that is the sort of event that could spark a long-feared global cataclysm. The child recovered, and so far no one else appears to have been infected. But experts say they are monitoring the situation closely because whenever a new animal flu virus infects a person, it has the potential to create an entirely new virus that humans would be defenseless against. "Every transmission of an avian influenza virus to humans raises the possibility for a pandemic. So we immediately have a red alert," said Klaus Stohr, a top flu specialist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. "The concern is that a new virus with high transmissibility and high pathogenicity could emerge." The Hong Kong boy's family is in isolation, and officials are anxiously awaiting the results of tests on them and other children who attend the same kindergarten for signs that the virus has spread or mutated. Three family members had a mild cough. As soon as WHO officials learned of the case, the agency issued a global alert for scientists to be on the lookout for any flu cases caused by viruses that could not be identified, and they rushed samples of the Hong Kong virus to laboratories around the world to begin deciphering its genetic code and developing tests that could identify it quickly if it were to spread. "We have to treat it seriously," Stohr said. "Fortunately, so far it looks like an isolated case with no human-to-human transmission. But we are concerned." heraldnet.com