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http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5371743

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• The bird flu virus is far more lethal than the SARS virus that struck Asia last year and could unleash a pandemic that could kill as many as 50 million people, a World Health Organization official says.
• A WHO estimate last week that H5N1 could infect up to 30 percent of the world's population and kill between two and seven million people was a conservative estimate, said Shigeru Omi, regional director of WHO's Western Pacific Regional Office.
• It has affected not only birds, but cats, pigs and tigers ...
• The virus has killed 32 people in Thailand and Vietnam this year and millions of chickens, ducks and other birds have been culled across Asia.
• With the illness now endemic in poultry farms, experts fear it will only be a matter of time before the disease mutates into a form that can leap between humans and sweep through populations with no immunity.
• Two U.S. companies and a Japanese firm are working on a vaccine against H5N1 and clinical trials on its efficacy and safety have begun, Omi said.
• "Vaccines are very useful in reducing the scale of a pandemic but it is not a magic blitz in averting a pandemic," Omi said.
• Hong Kong said on Monday it may ban shopkeepers from slaughtering poultry in its battle against the virus.
• Hong Kong scientists have been fighting to end the widespread practice of killing live chickens in markets since 1997, when the H5N1 virus first spread to humans and killed six people in the territory.
• Strong opposition from the poultry industry has prevented the government from stopping stall holders in markets from selling live chickens and ducks and slaughtering them in front of customers.

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