Hong Kong - The chicken flu that has killed four people in Hong Kong can probably pass from human to human, investigators said Friday.
Barbara Reynolds of the Center for Disease Control task force in Hong Kong said "the data is beginning to support the belief.
it can go from one person to another."
Reynolds said, "There is still every possibility of a worldwide outbreak," but not, she added, of a very efficient virus.
The CDC expects to develop a vaccine against the infection in the next few months.
Scientists from the Hong Kong Department of Health, the World Health Organization and the CDC issued Friday the first extensive lab report on the flu, which was thought to infect only chickens.
The information comes from an investigation following the death of a 3-year-old boy, the first known victim of the virus.
About 2,000 blood samples were tested from people who had contact with the boy, including family and schoolmates, lab workers and poultry workers.
Scientists believe there has been human-to-human transmission of the disease because a classmate of the boy tested positive for antibodies, despite having no other risk factors for the infection. A 60-year-old neighbor, who had no contact with poultry, also tested positive.
Scientists tested 921 of the samples at least twice using a new micro-neutralization assay test developed at the CDC to measure antibodies to the chicken virus. The blood came from 502 people who had contract with the boy or with chickens, and from people from a control group with no known risk factors.
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