# 2607
With today's news that a baby has tested positive in a Hong Kong hospital for the H9N2 virus, it is probably a good time to go back to an interview given last August by world famous microbiologist Malik Peiris.
Peiris, indisputably one of the heroes of the 2003 SARS outbreak, cautioned that the H9N2 virus may be circulating far more commonly than we believe.
I covered this story in my blog, Fluing Under The Radar, on August 15th of this year.
Since the link on the Reuters story in that blog appears no longer active, I'll reprint an except here, with a new link.
By all means, follow the link to read the entire article.
H9N2 bird flu threat understated in humans
Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:55am EDT
HONG KONG (Reuters) - The H9N2 bird flu strain, identified as a possible pandemic threat, could be infecting more humans than commonly thought but its mild symptoms mean it often goes undetected, a leading Hong Kong bird flu expert said.
"It's quite possible ... H9N2 is infecting humans quite a lot, much (more) than we appreciate merely because it is beyond the radar," Malik Peiris, a Hong Kong-based microbiologist, told Reuters.
"In humans, it is very mild, so most of the time it's probably not even recognized or biologically tested," said Peiris, who has co-authored several papers on the strain in recent years.
<SNIP>
However, flu experts at the University of Maryland, St. Jude's Children's Research hospital in Memphis and elsewhere recently wrote in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE that the H9N2 strain posed a "significant threat for humans".
They found that just a few mutations could turn it into a virus that people catch and transmit easily.
Peiris said that while the H9N2 strain might be more transmissible, its effects would be far less devastating than a possible H5N1 pandemic.
"There are other viruses out there besides H5N1 that could be the next pandemic," Peiris said. "But I suspect (H9N2) will not be so severe in its outcome."
