One of the government's top scientists said Monday that the spread of bird flu to the United States is a "time bomb waiting to go off" but that federal and industry efforts to produce a vaccine are progressing.
"Although the threat of pandemic flu is there, it is impossible to predict in a number" what the odds are of it striking the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters. "But I can say it is much much greater than a few years ago."
"We do know that sooner or later there will be a pandemic flu" in the United States, Fauci said, and "we, the government, are working very hard to get a vaccine capability in shape …You know something likely will occur, but you don’t know when."
He said the aim is to have 100 million doses ready if bird flu is detected in the United States. Even if the strain is different than what is now found in Southeast Asia, the scientific infrastructure is in place to quickly shift to "massive production" of a new vaccine. The goal in the next few years is 150 million to 180 million doses.
Last year, contamination of flu vaccine in a British facility curtailed the distribution of about 48 million doses to the United States, half of what was planned.
"Pandemic flu" is defined as a strain never before seen in humans and that spreads across the globe. There were three such pandemics in the 20th century, in 1918, 1957 and 1968 — the latter two much milder than the first, which killed between 20 million and 40 million people worldwide, and infected one in four Americans, killing 675,000.
The flu infecting fowl in Southeast Asia can spread to people, although not very efficiently, Fauci said, and spreading it from one person to another is even less efficient. There have been only 112 cases reported so far of human-to-human infection. As a result, he said, there is no reason to vaccinate everyone in the United States against bird flu.
But it will eventually spread, he predicted. "It’s an epidemiological time bomb waiting to go off," Fauci said, although he cautioned it would not occur suddenly and massively and would give officials time to produce a vaccine.