Six Months Until Bird Flu Hits U.S.?
U.N. Bird Flu Chief Speculates On Spread Due To Migratory Patterns
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Play CBS Video Video HealthWatch Melissa McDermott reports the bird flu surpasses AIDS, an experimental vaccine shows promise in preventing ear infections, and nearly half of American kids will be overweight by 2006.
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Video Bird Flu Watch The United States has banned some poultry and live bird shipments from France after the bird flu outbreak in Europe. Dr. Emily Senay discusses what's being done to stop the virus.
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This image provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows USFWS bird biologist Brian McCaffery conducting shore bird research inside the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Alaska. (AP (file))
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A stone marten is seen in the Zoological Garden in Dresden, Germany, Thursday, March 9, 2006. The H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in a stone marten, a German laboratory said Thursday. (AP)
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A cat looks through the fence on Feb. 17, 2006, in the Noah's Ark animal shelter in Graz, Austria, where several birds died last month of H5N1. (AP)
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Didier Labat, a butcher at a Bayonne supermarket, checks chickens from the southwestern Landes region, March 6, 2006. A lethal strain of bird flu has spread to a region on France's Mediterranean coast. (AP)
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A cat walks through bushes in the small town of Schaprode on the northern German island, March 1, 2006. (AP Photo/Frank Hormann)
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Interactive Bird Flu Soars Follow the spread of the virus around the globe, find out about the threat to humans and get details about U.S. preparations
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Migratory patterns will probably take birds carrying the virus from West Africa to the Arctic and Alaska this spring, Dr. David Nabarro said Wednesday. Some infected birds will then likely move south in the fall on a migratory route to the Americas.
"I think it's within the next six to 12 months," Nabarro told a news conference, "And who knows — we've been wrong on other things, it may be earlier."
Meanwhile, a German lab says bird flu has spread to another animal species there.
The lab found the virus in a weasel-like mammal called a stone marten.
The marten was found on a northern German island where an infected cat was found last month. Infected cats have since been found in Austria. Cats are believed to have caught the virus by eating infected birds. A German official notes that martens and cats eat comparable foods.
The H5N1 strain has spread rapidly through Asia and Europe and recently reached Africa, devastating poultry stocks. Virtually all people who have gotten bird flu have had close contact with infected poultry.
In other developments:
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