GlaxoSmithKline (nyse: GSK - news - people ) is working on its own bird-flu vaccine.
Hong Kong-listed shares of Chinese airlines, which were among the hardest-hit companies during the 2003 SARS outbreak, tumbled amid the bird-flu worries.
There is likely to be more clarity in January as to how all this money would be allocated, at yet another bird-flu meeting.
ECONOMIST: Calls for more money as the threat looms ever larger | The
The last thing Mr de Villepin needed was the bird-flu scare.
Worries that an outbreak of a new bird-flu strain in China will stifle domestic air-travel demand sent shares of the nation's airlines falling sharply Friday, triggering a broader selloff in airline and travel stocks world-wide.
Last year's flu-shot shortage was scary enough, but now scientists see the specter of a bona fide pandemic if the bird-flu strain known has H5N1 were to mutate into an infection that could spread to people.
Vaccines are developed for polio, TB, AIDS, bird-flu and mad-cow type epidemics and pandemics that periodically threaten to envelop the world, with the feared trends actually resulting not in annihilation of the human species, but in an improvement in life expectancies.
Masahiro Kawai, an official at the Asian Development Bank, this week urged the region to prepare for a slump in the dollar, the probability of which he compared to that of a global bird-flu epidemic: it is far from a certainty but would have a tremendous impact if it happened.
ECONOMIST: The region's currencies stay strong amid the squalls
Past experiments have shown it to make viruses -- including the H5N1 bird flu virus -- more likely to infect ferrets, which are commonly used in flu research.
We have also had a few health scares to keep our minds occupied - the Bird Flu scare, fish (red-tides), beef, and pork.
In other domestic news, the World Health Organization is watching out for mutations and possible human-to-human transmission of the new H7N9 bird flu strain after two family cluster cases - a father-and-son cluster and a husband-and-wife cluster - were detected in Shanghai, China Daily reports.
Trained at Wayne State and the University of Michigan as a physician and an epidemiologist, Brilliant sees a near-certainty that another AIDS, ebola or bird flu is coming, likely caused by human-animal interaction.
The bird flu, so-called H5N1, has top epidemiologists across the world on edge because of its potential to mutate into a new strain that no one would be immune to and that could easily spread among humans.
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post says there is still hope in battling the deadly bird flu as a 67-year-old man in Hangzhou and a four-year-old boy in Shanghai are both recovering from the virus.
On January 5, a 19-year-old Beijing woman died of bird flu after handling poultry, officials said.
Thailand, which was the world's fourth-largest exporter of poultry before bird flu hit, would be reluctant to abandon all hope of resuming exports.
The Beijing News and China Youth Daily call on authorities to introduce free medical treatment for bird flu victims who are less well-off.
Health authorities are testing a family infected by H7N9 in Shanghai for human-to-human transmission of the new bird flu strain, The Beijing News reports.
But in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Thai doctors report two cases of apparent human-to human transmission of the bird flu.
The family is an 87-year-old man who died from bird flu on 4 March, along with one of his sons who died of pneumonia who tested negative for the virus.
Bird flu does not usually pass from person-to-person, but the disease is closely monitored because of concerns that the H5N1 virus could mutate allowing to spread more easily among people.
One week ago, a 27-year-old woman from eastern China died of bird flu, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
On January 18, 2009, a 27-year-old woman from eastern China died of bird flu, Chinese authorities said, making her the second person to die from the deadly virus at that time.
SEPA. Their efforts to persuade the agriculture ministry to co-operate over livestock-related threats to public health, such as bird flu, have encountered stubborn resistance.
While the Nature study looked at how a bird flu virus could become airborne through mutations and re-assortment with other viruses, the Science study suggests mutations alone could do the trick.
Amid growing public concern over the outbreak, health authorities have promised transparency and stressed that there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the new strain of deadly bird flu, China Daily reports.
In addition, the World Health Organization said a two-year-old girl in northern China had tested positive for bird flu.
More than 90 people have died of H5N1 bird flu since the disease's resurgence in December 2003 - most of them in South-East Asia.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index lost 2.4% amid worries over a new strain of bird flu spreading in China, which weighed on Hong Kong-listed airline stocks.
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