Reuters
Tuesday, March 7, 2006

WARSAW, March 6 -- Avian influenza extended across Europe as Poland confirmed on Monday that two dead swans had the H5N1 virus and Austria reported that a cat at an animal sanctuary had tested positive for the virus.

Experts from the World Health Organization, meeting in Geneva, said the spread of bird flu was unprecedented and the threat of a human pandemic persisted.

"Events in recent weeks justify our concern," said Margaret Chan, WHO's top influenza official, at the start of a three-day meeting to prepare defenses against a pandemic.

Chan noted that the cost to agriculture so far was about $10 billion and that 300 million farmers had seen their livelihoods affected.

China said Sunday that the H5N1 virus had killed a man in southern Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong. No outbreaks among birds had been reported in the area where he died. The man was the 95th person killed by bird flu since late 2003, WHO said. The virus remains essentially an animal disease that people contract through contact with infected birds.

Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted among humans. The virus has reached at least 15 new countries in the past month, moving across Europe and hitting Egypt and West Africa.

A cat in an animal sanctuary in southern Austria had tested positive for H5N1 but had not shown any symptoms of the disease, Austria's health minister said Monday.

The Associated Press reported from Atlanta:

In the United States, federal health officials announced plans Monday for a second vaccine to protect people from bird flu because the virus is changing.

The government has several million doses of an earlier bird flu vaccine, but it was based on a sample of virus taken from Vietnam in 2004. The germ is thought to have mutated enough since then that the form circulating in Africa and Europe may be different, health officials said.

Government flu experts would not speculate on whether the earlier vaccine would still protect most people but said they believed it would be less effective than a new vaccine.