Winter sickness bug shuts down hospital wards

SECURITY experts fear that terrorists could use a lethal form of bird flu as a biological weapon capable of killing millions.

Health officials have already issued a warning about the threat posed by the norovirus this year []

Their concern follows the US government’s failure to prevent scientists revealing details of an airborne strain of the virus.

American authorities had asked two scientific journals not to publish key sections of research on the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Two research teams submitted manuscripts on bird flu virus to the journals where they described how they deliberately mutated H5N1 into an “airborne” strain that can be transmitted in coughs and sneezes between ferrets – the best animal “model” for human flu lab tests.

Until now the bird flu virus has shown very limited ability to pass from human to human

Until now the bird flu virus has shown very limited ability to pass from human to human.

It is now feared that terrorists could use the information gleaned from the research to recreate the deadly airborne form of the virus.

This, it was claimed, could mutate into a super-flu that could spread globally within weeks.