Vaccine Could Work to Halt Bird Flu Virus

Tests show an experimental vaccine appears able to protect against a bird flu virus spreading across Asia and Russia that has infected and killed dozens of people, a health officials said Sunday.

The A(H5N1) strain of flu has cut a lethal swath through poultry flocks in at least 10 countries and has also infected 112 people, killing 57. It has not yet developed the ability to spread easily from person to person, but if it does, that will signal the start of what scientists fear could be a deadly flu pandemic.

U.S. and international health experts are developing plans to respond to a pandemic, and development of a vaccine has been a priority. “We now know we have one,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but “there are still many, many obstacles to what we would call total preparedness.”

Tests of the vaccine involved 452 healthy volunteers under 65. “We found it did protect, albeit at a dose of vaccine that is higher than would be normally used” in a regular flu shot, Fauci said, and “very likely” two doses will be needed to provide full protection. It will now be tested in children and the elderly, he said.

The United States has bought 2 million doses of the vaccine and will order more, Fauci said, but global vaccine-making capacity is limited. Even “if every vaccine manufacturer decided to start doing this,” he said, “we still would not have enough.”