USA Today A quiet effort to prevent the next global pandemic began rolling off an assembly line this summer behind the gates of an office complex in suburban Raleigh.
In this sprawling factory, sheltered by thick pine groves, workers at CSL Seqirus are bottling millions of doses of a new vaccine targeting the H5N1 bird flu virus.
The virus, which first emerged in wild birds around 1997, has been spreading this year among dairy and poultry farms across the United States. hirteen farmworkers have been infected with the virus this year, some suffering eye redness, others a cough. No one became sick enough to require hospitalization, although, in other countries, about half of the people diagnosed with H5N1 over the years have died.
The virus is not being passed from person to person – and that is key to why public health officials aren’t hitting the panic button. Because the risk to the general public remains low, the federal government doesn’t think it’s worth vaccinating anyone against H5N1 yet – even the farmworkers most at risk for getting sick from infected chickens or cows.