By Seamus McGraw
(Continued)
Bird flu infects cats and other mammals. Experts worry
Just last week, in Germany, where authorities in January found the virus in a dead cat, health officials detected the virus in a stone marten, a kind of weasel. It was hardly the first time that H5N1 had been found in warm-blooded creatures whose biological structure is closer to humans than birds. In July, two civets were found with the virus in Viet Nam and since then, it has been found in captive leopards and tigers and other large cats. Like the stone marten in German, those animals are believed to have become infected after eating diseased birds. But the appearance of the disease in these mammals worries experts who believe that the virus, once established in mammals, is likely to mutate rapidly, ultimately reaching the point where it can easily jump human to human.
In fact, according to published reports, researchers have begun to focus their attention on the strains of the virus found in cats as they race the clock to develop possible a possible vaccine.
No one, however, believes that an effective vaccine will be developed in time and in sufficient quantities to do anything but slightly blunt the impact of a pandemic, and then only slightly.
In all likelihood, experts believe, when — no one uses the phrase "if" — it will be in a form that has evolved to thrive in a mammalian host and will, most probably, be carried by humans from impoverished and overwhelmed nations in Asia and Africa and elsewhere throughout the world.
But authorities also fret that the disease could mutate in a variety of animal species in a number of places at once.
"Every country in the world needs to have its veterinary services on high alert for H5N1 to be sure they are not caught unawares," Nabarro said.
And yet, there is little evidence that Nabarro's warning is being widely heeded. In fact, there is anecdotal evidence that in some quarters, the desperate warnings are being greeted with a kind of stoic silence.
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