Emergency Plan for Possible Lethal Flu Pandemic

German health authorities are drawing up an emergency plan for a possible outbreak of a particularly lethal flu pandemic that could kill millions of people worldwide. "The bird flu in Asia has stepped up the urgency and time pressure on us," Reinhard Kurth, head of the Robert Koch Institute told news magazine Spiegel. Experts fear that the flu virus might mate with human influenza and mutate into a deadlier super virus. The German emergency plan foresees the mass distribution of the antiviral drug Tamiflu from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-LaRoche as well as vaccinations to three million doctors, nurses and other members of the health system, to start with.