The US Midwest has seen a soaring outbreak of the influenza streak in the past few weeks, bringing shortage of eggs as scientists study how exactly this strain is spreading; in the meantime, in the middle of the fear, Kansas scientists have developed an avian flu vaccine.
Science Daily reports that the new avian flu vaccine was created by scientists at the Kansas State University and published recently as a research paper for the Journal of Virology, under the name "Newcastle disease virus-vectored H7 and H5 live vaccines protect chickens from challenge with H7N9 or H5N1 avian influenza viruses."
According to International Business Times, the new avian flu vaccine is aimed at two different strains of the virus, namely H5N1 (which has a 60 percent mortality rate and has killed many between north Africa and southeast Asia) and H7N9, which WHO says has been spreading in China since 2013.
"In Southeast Asia there are a lot of markets that sell live birds that people can buy and prepare at home," said Jürgen Richt, one of the researchers behind the avian flu vaccine. "In contrast to the H5N1 virus that kills the majority of chickens in three to five days, chickens infected with the H7N9 virus do not show clinical signs of sickness. That means you could buy a bird that looks perfectly healthy but could be infected. If an infected bird is prepared for consumption, there is a high chance you could get sick, and about 1 in 3 infected people die."
Combining two viruses made the creation of the avian flu vaccine possible.
HNGN reports that, prior to the announcement regarding the avian flu vaccine, the United States Department of Agriculture had reported 179 detections of the virus in the past month, all of which have affected almost 41 million birds spread throughout 14 different states in the region: Arkansas, California, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin; it's thought to be the biggest outbreak in the country's history.
