2018 报刊英语阅读Unit 3 Text A Human cases of Bird Flu Are surging.ppt

Most bird flu viruses don’t kill poultry. They are of low pathogenicity – better known in the flu world as low path viruses. But viruses that carry an H5 or an H7 hemagglutinin protein on their outer shell can be deadly to chickens. The ones that do are called highly pathogenic or high path viruses. H7N9 has, until now, been a low path virus. However, the low path H5 and H7 viruses have long been known to be able to evolve to highly pathogenic ones if they are found in poultry for too long. The genetic sequences from Guangdong, recently posted in a flu virus database, suggest that has happened there. IV. Difficult Sentences While the designations high path and low path relate specifically to how bird flu viruses behave in chickens, it is known that high path viruses, when they infect people, can cause more disseminated disease than human flu viruses, involving organs other than the lungs, Davis said. Flu experts find these changes unsettling. “It certainly introduces uncertainty into the mix,” Jernigan said. “Where we kind of thought things were under control and going away, they’ve increased. We thought we had a low path [virus] and it’s now become high path. And so we do want to make sure that all mitigations that can be done will get done.” IV. Difficult Sentences In the early days of the H7N9 infection, authorities in China enacted strict rules to try to control the new outbreaks of the highly pathogenic avian influenza. Markets were ordered to institute clean days, when no chickens could be stored in or brought in. The idea was to stop the virus from circulating among the birds in the markets. But in parts of the country, enforcement of containment efforts has become more lax as human cases declined in 2015 and 2016, Peiris said. IV. Difficult Sentences News that the virus may be evolving to high path status may actually have a beneficial effect, he noted. “Because this would now mean that the agriculture sector would take this much more seriously. Although I