China to launch new bird flu vaccine for poultry

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will begin mass-production of a
new bird flu vaccine for poultry by the end of the month that
could also help in the development of a vaccine to protect
people, state media said on Monday.

The new vaccine — 1 billion shots of which are expected to
have been produced by year-end — will be used alongside
existing vaccines from next year, the China Daily said, quoting
chief veterinarian Jia Youling.

The live vaccine, which will also work against another
poultry disease, Newcastle disease, can be delivered orally,
nasally or by spraying and will cost a fifth of existing
inactivated vaccines, the newspaper said.

Standard flu shots are inactivated, meaning the virus is
killed, but live vaccines contain weakened forms of the live
virus.

Newcastle outbreaks killed almost 57,000 chickens in China
in September, the report said.

“Research and production techniques will provide reference
for developing new vaccines for human infections of bird flu,”
Jia was quoted as saying.

There have been 141 confirmed human cases of the deadly
H5N1 strain of bird flu, all of them in Asia, including six in
China. Two people have died from bird flu in China, out of 73
known fatalities in Asia.

Scientists fear the strain could mutate from a disease that
largely affects birds to one that can pass easily between
people, leading to a human pandemic.

An intensive poultry vaccination campaign and enforced
quarantine of bird flu outbreak areas have shown results in
China’s fight against bird flu, state media said last week.

Only one county out of 31 to have reported the H5N1 strain
of bird flu this year remained under isolation and there had
been no new outbreaks for about three weeks, state media said.

Since October, China had also vaccinated more than 5
billion birds.

It began last week human trials of the homegrown bird flu
vaccine and initial results are expected within three months.