World ‘not ready for bird-flu outbreak’
But Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt also said that US officials and their counterparts around the globe recognise that a pandemic is possible and are working hard on ways to protect people from it.
“The good news is, we do have a vaccine,” Mr Leavitt said on CBS television’s The Early Show.
But he cautioned that officials do not currently have an ability to mass produce it or get it to people quickly.
Outlining the pandemic plan in an interview, Mr Leavitt said US health officials would rush overseas to wherever a bird flu outbreak occurred and work with local officials to try to contain it.
Mr Leavitt is travelling to Asia to shore up international cooperation should bird flu mutate to easily infect people.
To further that goal, more than 65 countries and international organisations were to participate in discussions yesterday at the State Department in Washington DC about preparations for the possibility of worsening bird flu.
There have been three flu pandemics in the last century; the worst, in 1918, killed as many as 50 million people worldwide.
Scientists say it is only a matter of time before the next worldwide influenza outbreak. Concern is rising that it could be triggered by the avian flu called H5N1.
That virus has killed or led to the slaughter of millions of birds, mostly in Asia, but also in parts of Europe. It has killed about 60 people, mostly poultry workers, because so far the virus does not spread easily from person to person.
The fear is that it will mutate to spread easily.
Role-playing different outbreak possibilities over the past few months led federal health officials to broaden their focus on how to detect a bird-flu mutation in another country and quickly send overseas help.
If that fails, the pandemic plans’ first draft last year called for closing schools, restricting travel and other old-fashioned quarantine steps.
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