virulence. The book "Evolutionary Dynamics" suggest that viral coinfection selects for both maximum virulence and infectivity. How close the world came to a pandemic is underlined by the reaction of Panasonic Japan. On February 9th – on the very same day as 18 employees of Avir were given preventative treatment for the bird flu in the Otto Wagner Hospital in Vienna – AFP reported that Panasonic Japan intended to bring back to Japan the families of many of its staff working around the world because of the threat of a bird flu pandemic. “Panasonic to fly home workers’ families over bird flu fears Feb 9, 2009 TOKYO (AFP) — Panasonic Corp. has ordered Japanese employees in some foreign countries to send their families home to Japan in preparation for a possible bird flu pandemic, a spokesman said Tuesday.” The firm decided to take the rare measure “well ahead of possible confusion at the outbreak of a global pandemic,” he said. The Times of India reported on March 6th, 2009, that a pandemic was nearly triggered as a result of Baxter’s actions. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Health--Science/Science/ Virus-mix-up-by-lab-could-have-resulted-in-pandemic/articleshow/ 4230882.cms
“It's emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic. Last December, the Austrian branch of US vaccine company Baxter sent a batch of ordinary human H3N2 flu, altered so it couldn't replicate, to Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, also in Austria. In February, a lab in the Czech Republic working for Avir alerted Baxter that, unexpectedly, ferrets inoculated with the sample had died. It turned out the sample contained live H5N1, which Baxter uses to make