The Bush administration published a 240-page national strategy in May 2006 for confronting a potential avian influenza pandemic, outlining steps to detect outbreaks, quarantine the infected, and slow the virus's spread across the United States.
Officials warned that an uncontrolled bird flu outbreak could last 18 months, kill nearly two million Americans, and inflict severe damage on the economy and critical infrastructure. The plan assigns 300 separate tasks to federal agencies and establishes priorities for who receives vaccinations first, while also calling for expanded remote-work capacity to limit public exposure.
President Bush had earlier asked Congress for $7 billion to fund the effort, covering vaccine research, production, and stockpiling of antiviral medications. Tamiflu, made by Swiss firm Roche, was identified as a primary treatment option while an effective vaccine remained months away from production.
The H5N1 virus had not yet appeared in North America, but US officials considered an eventual outbreak likely, having tracked the disease's progression from Asia through Africa and into Europe. Globally, roughly 200 people had been infected, with about half dying. Scientists remained concerned the virus could mutate into a form transmissible between humans, potentially triggering a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 outbreak that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
Egypt, the most affected non-Asian country since the epidemic began in 2003, reported its 13th human H5N1 case in six weeks on the same day the US plan was released.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in May 2006, in its own words.