Two domestic cats in Thailand died of the same bird flu that has killed at least 22 people in Asia, a veterinarian said yesterday, a day after Canada announced its first case of a different strain of the virus.
The discoveries have alarmed scientists who now fear the disease can spread as easily between species as it has between countries.
They said yesterday developing human vaccines must be a priority to prevent a pandemic like the one in 1918 that killed as many as 50 million people worldwide.
"It is a pandemic threat constantly simmering," Dr. Marion Koopmans, of the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, said in an interview in London.
China confirmed two more suspected outbreaks of the influenza H5N1 virus in two provinces yesterday.
Thai officials also reported that the virus had reappeared in two provinces that had been declared under control.
With the influenza H5N1 virus spreading at an unprecedented rate through poultry and with 22 people dead in Asia, researchers warned it poses a substantial threat to human health.
In two reports in the Lancet medical journal, Koopmans and Malik Peiris of the University of Hong Kong, who both dealt with previous cases of animal-to-human transmission of flu, described why the current avian outbreak is so dangerous.
Koopmans said it is possible the virus may not be completely controlled in poultry because it is so widespread, which furthered the case for making a vaccine a top priority.
An Australian government research lab said a locally developed drug, Relenza, used for treating human influenza, had proven effective against bird flu in laboratory tests.
The virus has also crossed the species barrier to domestic animals, and in Bangkok yesterday scientists confirmed the deaths of two house cats.
"We found H5N1 in two of the three cats," said Teerapol Sirinaruemit, a veterinarian at Kasetsart University's animal hospital who conducted autopsies on three animals.
"They might have caught the virus from eating chicken carcasses or from live chickens that had bird flu," he said.
The three were among 15 cats living in a house located near an infected chicken farm 60km west of Bangkok, Teerapol said.
Fourteen cats died, but it was unclear if all had been infected with the H5N1 virus. One cat was still alive.
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