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China sets blueprint for fighting flu pandemic
China announced color-coded emergency measures on Wednesday to avert or handle an influenza pandemic amid fears that a deadly strain of bird flu could mutate and infect millions of people around the world. Millions of Chinese catch flu every winter, while avian influenza, including the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed 65 people in Asia, is believed endemic among the country's bird population.
The Health Ministry is to set up a national anti-influenza leadership group and stockpile vaccines. It has urged regional governments to coordinate monitoring efforts. Four levels of alert -- blue, yellow, orange and red -- will indicate the seriousness of the outbreak. "The most serious level, red, will be announced in case of a consistent and rapid spread of new sub-type flu virus among the people, or if the World Health Organization announces the outbreak of a flu pandemic," the ministry said. Experts say southern China could be ground zero for such a pandemic because many there live in close proximity to livestock, allowing animal diseases such as bird flu to jump to humans. "If a person is infected with a human influenza and also
contracts avian influenza ... the two kinds of influenza could mix and re-assort
themselves into a more dangerous strain that could cause easy human-to-human
transmission," Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, a WHO spokeswoman in Beijing, told Reuters.
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