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This chapter discusses the flu virus. The virus that causes the annual epidemics of influenza travels through the air. Although flu is widely viewed as a human disease, its agent is by nature a virus of birds. Circumstances may force this avian virus to infect other animals, but it is most at home in wild ducks. Contact with wild birds or their excrement causes epidemics of flu virus infections in seals, whales, horses, chickens, turkeys, and pigs. The transmission of the flu virus to humans and flu epidemics are discussed.
Keywords: flu virus; viral infections; avian flu; ducks; flu epidemics
Chapter. 5647 words.
Subjects: microbiology
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