A human strain, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, has killed at least 88 Europeans.
Glaxo's is made from a weakened human strain, and is delivered in two doses.
The second step was to use RNA testing to determine whether the Type A flu was the circulating human strain.
There is an H1N1 human strain in this year's flu shot, and all H1N1 flus are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain.
There is an H1N1 human strain in this year's shot, and all H1N1 flus are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain.
Instead, H1N1 emerged in Mexico with a complicated quadruple pedigree: two strains of swine flu, a human strain, and a bird one.
The longer the avian strain of influenza, H5N1, stays around, virologists fear, the greater the chances that it will swap genes with a human strain to create an entirely new virus and, possibly, a pandemic.
Part of the variability in approach, scientists say, is because there is inadequate data on how well these little-used drugs might work against a human strain of bird flu, or even against common flu viruses.
With Holland in the grip of a winter flu epidemic, caused by the most common human strain of the virus, H3, Osterhaus feared that there was a risk of double infections.
Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, said it was vital that people recognised the difference between the avian flu that has killed millions of birds and 60 people in south-east Asia and a human strain.
Attacking influenza: Scientists hope that new technologies for making vaccines will lead to quicker availability of vaccines against the human strain of H1N1 that originated from the swine flu virus, shown here.
