H5n1

HONOLULU -- The plans, detailed and terrifying, are for the worst-case scenario. One section of this city's bustling, tourist-filled airport could be converted into an emergency quarantine station for patients suspected of carrying avian influenza. Air filters would kick on to prevent the deadly virus from spreading. Medical personnel entering the quarantine area would wear protective suits. As avian flu continues to spread across the globe, health officials are paying close attention to Hawaii, the nation's gateway to Asia and the state where some experts believe the much-feared H5N1 virus could first be detected on American soil.

U.S. CONSUMERS are no birdbrains. Or, more precisely, they can tell the difference between a serious risk to human health and a disease that kills livestock. And, as a certain stock-trading criminal defendant/TV personality might say, that's a good thing. Witness the lack of panic over poultry. Nobody in the U.S. seems to be chickening out about eating chicken despite the recent news concerning avian influenza. Perhaps that's because people are paying attention -- or at least avoiding misinformation.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush expressed concern yesterday about the threat of a global flu epidemic, and said Congress should consider letting the U.S. military play a broader role in enforcing quarantines and other emergency measures. Bush said the possibility of a virulent new strain of avian influenza spreading rapidly around the world raised difficult questions about a president's ability to direct an effective domestic response effort and the federal government's authority to carry it out. Flu pandemics have tended to occur about three times a century, after the emergence of a new influenza virus to which humans have developed no immunity.

NATIONAL DeLay yields House leadership Rep. Tom DeLay, under pressure from colleagues and swept into an election-year lobbying scandal, abandoned his effort to remain House majority leader yesterday. The move touched off a battle for the House Republican leadership in a campaign season tinged by corruption. pg 1a Plan lifts residents' restrictions New Orleans' blueprint for redevelopment after Hurricane Katrina will recommend that residents be allowed to return and rebuild anywhere, no matter how damaged the neighborhood, according to members of the rebuilding commission.

WASHINGTON -- The maker of the antiviral pill Tamiflu has agreed to help U.S. generic manufacturers increase production of the drug, which is in short supply because of fears of a worldwide bird flu epidemic, lawmakers said yesterday. Sens. Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said the Swiss company Hoffman-La Roche Inc. has agreed to enter into negotiations with generic manufacturers to significantly expand U.S. production. Tamiflu is not a vaccine, but if administered early, it can reduce the severity of the illness and help prevent its spread.

Avian flu has been detected in mallard ducks on a farm on the Eastern Shore, though officials caution that the low-pathogenic strain poses no risk to humans and is not the type that has been blamed for more than 140 deaths around the world. Experts said the presence of the virus likely would not affect the $1.5 billion Delmarva poultry industry. Samples taken from chicken houses in the vicinity of where the ducks were found have tested negative for the virus, and though it is not known if the strain could infect chickens, such a scenario remains unlikely, they said.

The flu season that arrives each fall kills an average of 36,000 people in the United States alone. Far deadlier are worldwide outbreaks, called pandemics, that periodically sweep through human populations. Over the past 300 years, there have been 10 influenza pandemics, including the so-called Spanish flu of 1918-19, which killed more than 500,000 people in the United States and more than 50 million worldwide. Now, public health experts worry that an avian flu strain - called H5N1 - racing through animal populations in Southeast Asia could touch off the next pandemic.