Institute says a flu pandemic is 'probable'
February 13, 2006, 13:30

The bird flu virus outbreak was in line with historical precedent which showed the world due for another pandemic, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said today. "We are due for one (a pandemic), if the periodicity holds," Barry Schoub, the institute's executive director, said. Since the 12th century, pandemics have occurred at a rate of about two or three every hundred years, he said.

The last pandemic was the Hong Kong flu of 1968 to 1969. "It's a probability, but not a certainty," he said of the likelihood of the H5N1 virus spreading between humans. Although the pandemic had already crossed the species barrier, Schoub said there was little evidence of efficient transmission between humans.

A worrying factor, however, was that there were many "molecular similarities" between the virulent H5N1 virus and that which caused the Spanish influenza of 1918 to 1919. This killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide.

Schoub said the fact that the virus, which has existed in its present form since 1997, had still not spread between humans was cause for hope. "It has had the opportunity, but has not grasped it," he said. The H5N1 virus has so far killed 88 people out of 166 infected in seven countries. [my emphasis] - Sapa