Expert: Heed Bird Flu Warnings

While government officials continue to tour Asia exploring the spread of bird flu, experts in the United States warn the threat, while it may not be imminent, is very real.

Right now, explains The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay, avian flu occurs almost exclusively in birds. What has health officials worried is that we're not prepared for the possibility it will mutate and create a human pandemic.

The bird flu virus, known as h5n1, is on the move, spreading widely in bird populations throughout Asia, and now reaching as far west as Turkey and Romania.

So far, avian flu has jumped to humans only rarely.

"We've been lucky, because the virus has not adapted well to humans, but if a mutant arises that can transmit from human-to-human, then it's going to start to spread," observes Dr. Martin Blaser, who chairs the Department of Medicine at New York University. He is also president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, an organization helping the government prepare for a flu pandemic.

Asked if the medical community is scaring people, Blaser said, "I don't think we're scaring people at all. This is a really important problem, and it's a little like insurance. … In this case, our premium is to pay money for research on new vaccines, on new treatments for flu, so that when pandemic flu strikes, we'll be ready."

The government is stockpiling existing flu drugs and funding the development of new vaccines for bird flu.

But Blaser points out that there's a need to improve flu preparedness on many different levels: "We need to develop new drugs, because resistance emerges, and there's already evidence of resistance. … If an avian strain were identified as jumping from human-to-human, we would immediately have to move into vaccine production mode, and we're not ready for that.

"What we need is a plan, so that if influenza lands, everybody knows what to do, what their duty stations are, what the quarantine rules are, when schools should be closed, when air travel should be stopped."

Blaser says even if we dodge the bullet this year, we're not out of the woods: "As one of my colleagues says, 'The clock is ticking. We just don't know what time it is.' What that means is, if we duck it this year, it's great: It gives us one more year to prepare."

Senay notes that a vaccine is being tested in people that has shown early promise in fighting bird flu.

Also, while a more generic flu drug, Tamiflu, is effective in fighting bird flu, there is evidence the virus is developing resistance to it.