China hails bird flu vaccine amid prophecies of doom

BEIJING, Thursday (Reuters) - China has developed vaccines that block the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu among birds and mammals, Xinhua news agency reported, as scientists in the west warned of a possible global pandemic killing millions.

Scientists fear that avian flu, which is infectious in birds but does not spread easily among humans, could mutate into a form more capable of passing from animals to people. The H5N1 strain first surfaced in poultry in Hong Kong and China eight years ago and has killed 37 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia.

Global health officials fear it could mutate into a strain that could rival the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 and 40 million people.

"Experiments show the efficiency rate of the newly developed vaccines in preventing infection by the H5N1 virus is 100 percent," Chen Hualan, director of the China National Bird Flu Reference Laboratory, was quoted as saying in an overnight report.

China's Ministry of Agriculture had given its approval, and a sales permit, for the vaccines, Xinhua said, without mentioning whether the treatments had been evaluated outside the country.

The agency said supplies of the new vaccines had already been sent to far-flung western Qinghai province, where China has been scrambling to contain its first breakout since late 2004 after 178 geese were found dead of the H5N1 virus on May 4.

The new vaccines also prevented the spread of avian flu from migratory birds to waterfowl, which could easily pass the disease to domesticated birds, Xinhua said.