H2H H5N1 IS CONFIRMED: THEREFORE, HUMAN BIRD FLU PANDEMIC GROWING MORE LIKELY

RECOMBINOMICS:

The recently released WHO update on the H5N1 transmission in Pakistan in late 2007 confirms it was human to human to (H2H2H).

The transmission chain is supported by disease onset dates, contacts, and laboratory confirmation of three of the four members in the transmission. This chain would match the largest confirmed chain, which involved more family members, but was limited to two distinct transmission events in Karo, Indonesia.

For the Pakistan cluster, the index case was a veterinarian, who was infected while leading a cull of poultry in October, 2007. He developed symptoms on October 29, several days after the cull. He infected one of his brothers who cared for him. The brother developed symptoms on November 12 and died November 19. This brother infected two other brothers, who both developed symptoms November 21. One brother died November 27, while the other brother recovered.

Thus, of the four cases, two died and two recovered.

TELUS:

Testing confirms another two bird flu cases from cluster in Pakistan family

The World Health Organization has added two more people to Pakistan's avian influenza case count, saying followup blood testing confirmed additional cases from a suspected large family cluster late last year.

Multiple members of a family were eventually tested after one, a veterinary worker involved in culling H5N1 infected chickens, fell ill and seemed to set off a chain of infection within his extended family.

H5N1 wasn't initially suspected as the cause of illness, so the veterinary worker was not tested for it when he was sick. Once the virus was identified as a possible cause of the cluster of cases, only one member of the family - the third person to get sick - tested positive.

But more laborious followup testing - performed by looking for antibodies to the virus in the blood of surviving suspect cases - showed that the veterinary worker was indeed infected with H5N1.

The most likely explanation for the cluster is limited human-to-human spread, the WHO said.

"We believe that limited human to human transmission likely occurred among some of the family members," spokesperson Gregory Hartl said Thursday in an e-mail.

• THE VIRUS HAS NOW BEEN PROVEN TO BE ABLE TO MUTATE TO AN H2H FORM.
• A HUMAN PANDEMIC, WELL... IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME...