flu

Canadian health officials announced Tuesday that a teenager infected with H5N1 bird flu from an unknown source is in critical condition.

The teen is the first presumptive case of H5N1 bird flu in Canada.

She noted that since the late 1990s, when this current strain of bird flu originated in China’s Guangdong Province, the fatality rate was close to 60%.

Although California dairy farmers anticipated a bird flu mortality rate of less than 2%, some say between 10% and 15% of infected cattle are dying.

Nuzzo said there are other hypotheses — which she stressed are just hypotheses — including one that posits people who were exposed to the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 2009 may have acquired some immunity to the “N1” part of the virus.