No Bird Flu Vaccine Available in Russia – Onishchenko

MOSCOW. Oct 25 (Interfax) – Russia’s chief sanitary official, Gennady Onishchenko, has denied reports that a bird flu vaccine was obtained at a research institute in St.Petersburg in May 2005.

“No bird flu vaccine is available at the moment. We only have prototypes,” Onishchenko said, noting that many of them proved ineffective in practice.

“Researchers and practicing doctors use different criteria to evaluate vaccines. Our criterion is that a vaccine is a medicine that has been tested and is commercially produced,” Onishchenko said.

But work on the vaccine is well underway, although a great deal still has to be done and many tests remain to be carried out, he said.

Onishchenko declined to comment on how much time this work could take.

Onishchenko said that the bird flu may reach Moscow only if the disease assumes a pandemic scope. “So far only birds have been affected. The virus, detected in Russia, is not being transmitted from human to human,” he said.

Onishchenko also said that 180,000 domestic birds have been slaughtered during the latest wave of bird flu. “The damage is enormous and difficult to assess,” he said.