JAKARTA (AFP) — Indonesian scientists and officials said they were baffled by the "mysterious" behaviour of the bird flu virus here, which has already claimed nine lives this year in the world's worst-hit nation.
Indonesia has reported 126 cases of H5N1 bird flu, 103 of them fatal, since 2005. This year's victims have all come from the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities.
Officials from the ministry of agriculture's bird flu control unit told a media briefing that the risk factors for human infection remained unclear after studies were conducted around victims' homes.
"In some of the cases we found the virus in the water and chickens, but in many other cases the studies showed no signs of the virus in the surroundings," said the unit's Tjahjani Widjastuti at the briefing late Tuesday.
The usual mode of transmission of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is directly from an infected bird -- typically poultry -- to humans.
"The behaviour (of the virus in Indonesia) is mysterious and we are competing with the dynamics of the virus. There needs to be deeper study on why there are more cases in humans, what are the risk factors... so we can cut the chain of infection to humans," Widjastuti said.
Read the rest here.
If people are contracting and dying of H5N1 without any known poultry contact and the water is not contaminated, then there is another vector that has yet to be discovered. Nothing mysterious about that. Meanwhile, the 2 orphan ducklings are doing well inside a box in the (sigh) house.
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