H5N1 Carriers Found

So it looks like for some people H5N1 does not produce illness, and like good little carriers have the potential to spread the virus far and wide without knowing it. The scenarios for the global spread of Bird Flu just got a whole lot more grim. CIDRAP has all the dirty details:

"Sep 21, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – South Korea said last week that five workers who helped cull poultry nearly 3 years ago showed evidence of past infection with H5N1 avian influenza though they had never been ill. The Sep 15 report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the five workers had tested positive for antibodies to the H5N1 virus but had never had symptoms.

Samples from the workers were tested by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a Sep 15 Reuters report. "The five did not develop major illnesses and have no strain to transmit bird flu," Reuters quoted Korea's Center for Disease Control and Prevention as saying. Four other South Korean poultry workers were previously found to have H5N1 antibodies without having been ill, bringing the total to nine, according to Reuters.

South Korea had outbreaks of H5N1 disease in poultry in December 2003 and early 2004, but no human cases were reported. About 400,000 birds were infected and about 5 million were destroyed to contain the disease, the Reuters report said.

At the time, the government sent samples from 318 poultry industry workers to the US CDC for testing, which identified the four workers who had antibodies, the story said. Korean officials reported last February that the four had never been ill."

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It said that they no longer had the strain in their system, so I wonder how long it stays with you if you are a carrier. A month? A week? Depending on how long the virus lays dormant it could have vast implications towards the speed and breadth of a pandemic.