New Delhi, INDIA: An Indian veterinary (R) wearing a protective mask holds a healthy chicken during a check up operation at the Ghazipur poultry market in New Delhi, 22 February 2006. Chicken sales in India have nosedived following the weekend detection of the country’s first outbreak of deadly bird flu virus in poultry. Chicken was off menus in many restaurants in the Indian capital New Delhi with domestic airlines, including state-run Indian, following suit. AFP PHOTO/Prakash SINGH (Photo credit should read PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images | PRAKASH SINGH)
In November of 2014, a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu from Eurasia called H5N2 landed in North America—in a Canadian turkey farm east of Vancouver, to be exact. From there, the virus quickly spread and mutated into new varieties, including H5N1, fanning fears it would vault to humans and cause a deadly pandemic. By March of 2015, it and its kin had swooped into 15 US states, causing 248 outbreaks in domestic birds and $5 billion worth of damages to poultry operations.
Then, it vanished.
“It’s very good news,” Robert Webster, prominent influenza expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, told Ars. He and colleagues published surveillance data in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday that shows the swift and unexpected disappearing act by the noxious germ. But, he added, “it’s a mystery where it went.”
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Source: Ars Technica – The case of the vanishing pandemic: Deadly bird flu flies the coop in the US