Resumen de A race against time to diagnose bird flu
As H5N1 bird flu moves across Asia and into Europe, dozens of families, from China to Turkey, are spending days waiting for a verdict from government laboratories to confirm whether or not their loved one has the virus. With this, there are several technologies in the pipeline that could vastly speed up the diagnosis of respiratory ailments, and detect the precise strain causing a flu infection in minutes. Yet national pandemic plans have so far neglected improvements in diagnosis, and the public health establishment appears reluctant to move away from the reliable but plodding lab-based tests now in use.
