In The News

Dire Diplomacy in Global “Race for Vaccine”: Wired

Brendan Borrell May 1, 2020
The US Naval Medical Research Center once had more than 12 labs around the world, developing foreign partnerships to identify emerging disease. A research team identified the avian flu in Indonesia in 2005, though the partnerships had been deteriorating in 1998 over concerns about vaccine sales, suspended aid and spying worries. The 9/11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis then reduced budgets...

Factory Farming Blamed for Massive Bird Flu Outbreak: Experts

Kim Da-sol January 6, 2017
A highly pathogenic form of avian flu was detected in South Korea in November, and experts suggest that crowded conditions in industrial poultry farms have accelerated the spread of disease. “While the government has yet to offer clear reason for the worsening situation, casting the blame on migratory birds, experts pointed out that the battery cage-facilities at poultry farms and stockbreeding...

Bird Flu Strain in China “Passed Between Humans”

August 9, 2013
The viruses that cause flu can mutate quickly, and researchers have detected a probable human-to-human transmission of an emerging form of bird flu in China. “Until now there had been no evidence of anyone catching the H7N9 virus other than after direct contact with birds,” reports BBC News. “But experts stressed it does not mean the virus has developed the ability to spread easily between humans...

H7N9 Bird Flu Is “Serious Threat,” Researchers Warn

James Gallagher May 3, 2013
Researchers continue to study the outbreak of a new type of bird flu, H7N9, in China for any signs that the virus can spread through person-to-person contact. “As long as it can spread only from a bird to a person through direct contact it poses a relatively small risk globally – particularly in richer countries where such contact is rare,” reports James Gallagher of BBC News. “If it can spread...

WHO Puzzled by Deadly Chinese Bird-Flu Strain

Esther Fung April 22, 2013
A World Health Organization team of researchers is in China, trying to determine how a new strain of bird flu, H7N9, spreads. Human-to-human transmission would be dangerous, and researchers are investigating family members who share the flu strain. “So far, investigators have said they can't rule out limited person-to-person transmission, which could include unusually close contact, such as...

CDC Begins Work on Vaccine for China Flu

Donald G. McNeil Jr, Andrew Jacobs April 8, 2013
US researchers are developing a vaccine to block H7N9 flu that’s killed six in China. China reports that “No cases of human-to-human transmission have been confirmed, even though China’s disease control agency has traced hundreds of people who had contact with the 14 known cases,” report Donald G. McNeil Jr, Andrew Jacobs for the New York Times. Global cooperation to tackle the flu is underway,...

Is a Pandemic Being Born?

Laurie Garrett April 4, 2013
Epidemiologists are investigating whether the deaths of three unrelated Chinese individuals, showing symptoms of respiratory distress and pneumonia, are connected to thousands of dead pigs, ducks and swans found in three rivers, the Huangpu, the Xiang and the Sichuan. The events may be unrelated or, if connected, could signal the start of a flu virus mutating and crossing species, suggests...