Analyzing the genome of H5N1, scientists now suspect that the 1997 outbreak arose when an H5 goose virus combined with an N1 duck virus with quail acting as the mixing vessel (another species “raised under battery conditions”
1253 ). The virus then jumped from quail to chickens and then from chickens to humans.
1254 In 2001, in what seems to be a separate emergence, that same H5 goose virus combined with an N1 duck virus in a duck, then jumped to chickens directly, bypassing the quail.
1255 In both cases, the H5 virus first isolated from a farmed domestic goose population in Guangdong province was found,
1256 surprisingly, to be already partially adapted to mammals.
1257 Scientists speculate that this could have been a result of the virus acclimating to a pig, especially, perhaps, given Asia’s unique fish-farming technique.
1258
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