The virus is in the environment somewhere and the team needs to identify its source, how widespread it is and assess how well-prepared the region or provinces might be to respond to an outbreak. |
The widespread concern may be bad communication on our part. Millions of animals have been infected and very rarely have humans been infected, |
The world is not very well prepared, ... We think pandemic preparedness is really essential. |
There are a lot of scary stories out there about the next pandemic, but we have to make difficult decisions without a lot of information. The real answer is we don't know until the next pandemic virus appears. |
There have been four, maybe five cases of humans getting it from other humans, |
There have been something like 180 million birds that have died either directly from the disease or been culled because they were exposed to it. Yet it's taken us all this time -- more than two years, almost three years now -- to cross this barrier. |
There is a procedure to be followed. |
There is definitely concern about Egypt. In a relatively short period of time we have what is really a large number of cases. |
There is really no time frame. As long as the virus is circulating it could jump into humans. |
There is very little science in this area. However, we know that people who have spent a great deal of time around infected chickens, for example, only rarely get infected themselves. If it is an extremely rare event to get infected from a flock of infected chickens, it is likely that infections from cats is even rarer still. But again, there is little real evidence to guide us. |
There seems to be a heightened sense of concern about an extraordinarily rare disease. It is very, very, very difficult for humans to acquire, even with direct exposure. |
There's an urgent need to sample and tag and track as many of these species as feasible, especially considering the narrow time frame that we've got available to do it. We need more information on the migratory routes regarding these birds. |
These are not our viruses and this isn't our information. |
This is a disease that's appearing in the developing world. So what you want is affordable drugs, |
This is a virus that isn't acting in a predictable way. It's unusual that cats would be infected at all. The range of hosts here is unusual for an avian virus. |