Reply #48: NYT: Recent Spread of Bird Flu Confounds Experts

[PhilipShore]

New York Times
Recent Spread of Bird Flu Confounds Experts
March 6, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/international/europe/06flu.html

OZZANO EMILIA, Italy — As new outbreaks of bird flu have peppered Europe and Africa in recent weeks, experts are realizing that they still have much to learn about how migrating birds spread the A(H5N1) virus, leaving the continents vulnerable to unexpected outbreaks.

After new scientific research published in February clarified the role of wild birds in spreading the disease from its original territory in southern China, the virus promptly moved into dozens of locations in Europe and Africa, following no apparent pattern and upsetting many scientific assumptions about the virus and its course around the world. In fact, knowledge of how the virus is spreading in Europe and Africa is so rudimentary that experts say there is no way of predicting where it will strike next, although they are now certain that it will, again and again.

"We know next to nothing about this virus; we have only anecdotal information about where it exists and what birds it infects," said Vittorio Guberti, head veterinarian at the Italian National Institute for Wildlife here in a rural corner of northeastern Italy. He has been studying influenza in wild birds for more than 10 years.

"We don't even know where to focus. We have to sit and wait for the big epidemic to occur, and in the meantime there will probably be small outbreaks all the time."