Lisa Schnirring 
Staff Writer
Jun 22, 2012 (CIDRAP News) – The US Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) yesterday unveiled two new tools designed to boost pandemic
preparedness: an inventory of H5N1 avian influenza genetic changes and a system
the CDC and its partners are developing to help evaluate the threat from flu
viruses circulating in animals.
The CDC posted details about the new tools on its Web site
yesterday, the same day highly anticipated findings from the second of two
controversial H5N1 transmission studies—the one from a group at Erasmus Medical
Center in the Netherlands—was published in Science.
Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the CDC, told CIDRAP News that the
CDC waited for the publication of the study from Erasmus, led by Ron Fouchier,
PhD, to unveil the H5N1 genetic changes inventory. "The inventory has been in
the works for a while, and we wanted it to be as complete and up to date as
possible when we first posted to include the Fouchier sequences," he said.
The CDC said the H5N1 changes inventory is geared toward those
conducting influenza surveillance in humans and animals, as well as those
conducting research on H5N1. The inventory is a list of amino acid changes
grouped by viral protein. Listed wth each mutation are the phenotypic
consequences, the virus isolate tested, and selected literature references.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for
Influenza at the CDC, along with international partners, developed the inventory
and will update it periodically and apply date stamps when it adds new
mutations, the CDC said.
The Influenza Risk Assessment Tool (IRAT) is designed to help
public health officials prioritize their pandemic preparedness activities, such
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