Fatal Bird Flu in Pets in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam
Recombinomics Commentary
January 9, 2005
>>In Ho Chi Minh City: More than 1,000 ducks in Thanh My ward, district #2 tested positive to H5N1. The municipal veterinary agency has disinfected the affected farms and quarantined the ducks for culling.
In district 10, three pets were reportedly dead due to H5N1 contraction. The district veterinary service has captured 200 pets to take samples for tests.<<
More details on the pets that died from bird flu would be useful.
If the pets were caged birds the deaths would be analogous to the parakeet in the mine shaft used to measure fatal airborne elements.
If the pets were ducks, the fatalities would suggest a virus somewhat different than the virus from patients in Vietnam last season, which produced H5N1 that resulted in asymptomatic infections in lab experiments.
If the pets were cats, then it would indicate that the virus in Vietnam had achieved some of the properties seen in the isolates in Thailand that resulted in 147 tiger deaths in the Sri Racha Tiger Zoo or could be transmitted from domestic cat to domestic cat in the lab.
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