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It isn't a new theory, but it is beginning to garner favor amongst flu watchers. The idea that a warm autumn and winter has inhibited the spread of the H5N1 virus.
After the explosive geographic expansion of the virus last spring, many scientists felt the virus would be in North America by last fall. According to all of the test results to date, that didn't happen.
Many people also expected an increase in outbreaks this winter over last, and that hasn't happened either. Not yet, anyway.
One possible explanation follows:
Mild European winter contained bird flu spread, expert says
Fri Feb 23, 3:43 PM ET
ATHENS (AFP) - The mild winter in Europe helped contain the spread of bird flu amongst the continent's wild birds, a scientist from a top British laboratory said Friday.
"With the mild weather the movements of migrating birds were not as big as they usually are," said Ian Brown, head scientist at Britain's Weybridge Laboratory.
"The fact that so many birds didn't migrate or did it late would be a big explanation why we found very few cases" among wild birds, Brown told AFP on the sidelines of an international seminar on avian flu.
According to the latest World Health Organisation toll, the H5N1 strain of the virus that is deadly to fowl has killed 167 people worldwide since it emerged in 2003.
Despite efforts to improve readiness for a large-scale outbreak the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on Thursday said that nations were at least two years away from being able to effectively handle an influenza pandemic.
"It is a question of 'when' not 'if' a pandemic will occur," said ECDC director Zsuzsanna Jakob.
Last week an outbreak of bird flu was recorded at eight Moscow region sites, five of which were confirmed as the deadly H5N1 strain.
