Bird flu may use a plane to enter US

Washington The government's leading bird-flu scientist is more worried about the deadly virus arriving by plane than by fowl.

With migrating birds now carrying the H5N1 bird-flu strain, scientists have warned that an infected bird may reach the United States sometime this year.

But most of the human infections around the world have come from close contact with infected poultry, and US chicken farms are insulated from migrating birds, said Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"I am worried less about a migrating bird coming here, infecting the chickens and chickens infecting people than I am about a virus that might evolve someplace else on the globe and get here on a jet plane'' carrying a sick passenger, he said.