Monday, October 17, 2005

Bird Flu Arrives in Greece

Well, it's happened. Bird flu has arrived on the island of Inousses, near the island of Chios, Greece (for reference, that's here). Articles state that testing of birds in areas near Turkey led to the discovery.

That's the bad news. The further bad news is that we don't know whether this is a trailing discovery of sorts, meaning that other birds (or people) have been contaminated and have moved to other islands.

The good news is that it should be relatively easy to contain this infection, given the nature of an island. The tough part, naturally, will be to control transports of birds into and out of the island, as well as the testing of local villagers to ensure they're not infected.

As some say, it's a "lottery" whether the flu will mutate into a form that transmits easily to and between humans. Better safe than sorry in this case, as our story on a preventive vaccine is not that great.

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