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The Chinese disclosed this past weekend that some 30,000-plus ducks are headed for the incinerator and/or big burial pit in Guangdong Province.  Almost 10,000 ducks died between September 5 and 13 in Guangzhou's Panyu District and a sampling tested positive for H5 virus.  The authorities moved swiftly to contain the outbreak in poultry.  http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-29548020070915

But The Standard, a Hong Kong newspaper, is also reporting that at least 9,800 of those ducks in question had previously received a vaccination against the H5N1 virus!  Quoting from The Standard,

According to Guangdong Animal Epidemic Prevention Center director Yu Yedong, the 9,800 ducks that died at Sixian village had been vaccinated. But he added the first vaccination could only be 65 percent effective, while a second shot would have made it 90 percent.

He believed the birds were infected after the first shot. The deaths led to a mass culling of 32,600 ducks on Friday in an attempt to contain the outbreak.

Chinese bird flu vaccination attempts have been very controversial and have inadvertently put the entire world at risk of infection.  Just last year, the disclosures came that the Chinese government had mixed the M2 inhibitor Amantadine with its H5N1 poultry vaccine.  This. of course, led to H5N1's acquired resistance to Amantadine, the first antiviral used against influenza A some 20+ years ago.  Amantadine prevents influenza's M2 protein coat from dissolving. 

Just not any more: Seasonal influenza is Amantadine-resistant, but China's unwise mass use of the drug in chickens and ducks guaranteed that H5N1 would develop resistance prematurely.  So a front-line antiviral, cheap and plentiful, was summarily taken off the table by the Chinese.  Thanks, guys.  And we thought The Return of Lead Paint in Toys was bad!

Anyway, back to the story: The Guangdong ducks got the first shot, but were infected before the second shot could be administered.  So two things have happened:  First, these ducks only had a 65% chance of surviving an H5N1 attack.  According to the USDA, ducks are usually harvested between eight and sixteen weeks http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Duck_&_Goose_from_Farm_to_Table/index.asp . So despite the vaccination, more than 65% of the vaccinated ducks (it's more like 98%) got sick and died. 

Second, H5N1 gains a measure of resistance to the vaccine; it is allowed to "drift" and mutate, which concerns Dr Ho Pak-leung, an infectious diseases expert at Hong Kong University.  He stated there were worries the virus had mutated or the vaccine had not been effective.   This either means the vaccine was ineffective, or the virus has drifted beyond the vaccine's ability to protect.  Either way, it is not good news.

H5N1 moves from wild birds to poultry and back again, with humans somewhere in between, depending on locale.  And as we all know, influenza is an extremely resilient and "smart" virus:  Pretty impressive for something that many scientists do not even want to classify as a life form!  The bottom line is that we can expect similar vaccination attempts to fail, as the virus gains intelligence in its RNA and drifts further.