Farms may not be using 'right vaccines'

[Guest guest]

I can't help but comment. If everyone remembers reading the article about trying

to now give the bird flu vaccine alongside with the flu vaccine the below

article represents nicely why this is such idioticy. It is completely baffling

where the common sense is as it relates to mutating virus's. (not to worry

though, we got a huge supply in the national stockpile (oh wait, it's mutating -

make that a useless supply all at the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars

sponsored all by the taxpayers).

 

Farms may not be using 'right vaccines'

 

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-12/17/content_7311877.htm

 

HONG KONG - The re-emergence of bird flu in Asia and Egypt was partly because

poultry farms were not using the right vaccines and that the virus is mutating,

experts said on Tuesday.

 

Guan Yi, of the University of Hong Kong and an expert on H5N1 virus, warned that

poultry farms in some parts of the world were using vaccines that did not

provide full protection against the H5N1 and can't keep up with its mutation

process.

 

" The vaccine (used in Hong Kong) was made to fight an American strain of the

H5N2, and it is very different from the Guangdong strain of the H5N1 virus

here, " he said.

 

" When there were no outbreaks, we just assumed it was protective. Now that there

is an outbreak (on a Hong Kong farm), we assume it is useless, " he said.

 

Since late November, the virus has infected two children in Indonesia, killing

one of them. Earlier this week, it killed a 16-year-old girl in Egypt, too. And

a youth in Cambodia tested positive for the virus after eating chicken.

 

" The virus is definitely mutating, " Guan said, warning that authorities in some

areas were using batches of vaccine that may no longer be effective.

 

Since 1997, when H5N1 was identified in Hong Kong, scientists have discovered 10

strains of the virus, which shows the speed and extent at which it is mutating,

though it has not mutated to pass from human to human.

 

The strain found in Indonesia, for example, is very different from the H5N1

strain in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

 

" There is a theoretical possibility that the strain being used in the vaccine is

too different from the one circulating, " said Albert Osterhaus, a leading

virologist with Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

 

China Daily - Agencies

Randi J. Airola, © 517-819-5926