World Health Organization (WHO) officials are introducing new regulations to help in the fight against pandemics.

The new regulations, along with the experience in controlling severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), should ease the way for cooperation should there be an influenza pandemic, says Dr. David Heymann, executive director for communicable diseases at WHO

Airlines may become a crucial factor in fighting the spread of bird flu, leading federal health officials to streamline procedures for the possible quarantine of sick passengers.

Federal health officials have authority to detain or isolate any airline passenger suspected of harboring the avian flu virus, which scientists fear could mutate, making it easier for the virus to leap from person to person and quickly spread globally

An unknown respiratory illness has struck an Ontario nursing home, killing six elderly patients and infecting at least 79 residents, employees and visitors.

Toronto public health officials are monitoring 170 people connected to Seven Oaks Home for the Aged in Scarborough, a bedroom community just east of Toronto, including families and children who attend a day-care center in the building

Zhengli Shi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and colleagues find that almost 70 percent of the bat species sampled in the region showed evidence of infection with SARS-like viruses.

This would support the idea that bats are the natural host of the virus

The World Health Organization continues its warnings on the possibility of a major pandemic following the uncontrolled spread of the bird flu.

"While we still have a window of opportunity, we must do everything we can to avert an influenza pandemic, as we simultaneously prepare for a worse-case scenario," says Shigeru Omi, the WHO`s regional director for the Western Pacific