Scientists next month will begin human testing of a vaccine to combat a possible flu pandemic that experts have warned could kill as many as 7 million people, a Hong Kong newspaper reported Saturday. If the flu vaccine is successful and receives regulatory approval, commercial production could start in six to eight months, Klaus Stohr, coordinator of the global influenza program at the World Health Organization, told the South China Morning Post. "Two companies have finished the preparation of clinical lots of small amounts of vaccine for testing in humans. The trials will start in January," Stohr was quoted as saying from Geneva. He declined to name the companies involved or say where the trials would take place, the Post said. WHO's spokesman in Beijing Roy Wadia said he could not confirm Stohr's remarks. Bird flu has killed 32 people in Thailand and Vietnam and millions of chickens across Asia this year, but there has been no concrete evidence yet of human-to-human transmission of the disease. Yet global health experts agree the world is overdue for a flu pandemic and scientists are racing to develop an effective vaccine that would limit the damage. "Even if all companies started full-scale production just before the beginning of a pandemic, there would still not be enough vaccine for the whole world," Stohr said. Also Saturday, the Hong Kong government said it was testing a gray heron found sick near Hong Kong's border with mainland China last week to determine if it carried the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza. The bird later died, officials said. None of the six officials who came into contact with the bird, nor any of the chickens in poultry farms within five kilometers (three miles) of where the heron was found, have fallen ill, the government said.
