"Does that mean that there's no risk? No, of course not. I can't tell you at all

that there's no risk. But the benefits in my mind outweigh the risks," he said.

Making the research available generally will hopefully spark input on this topic from researchers in a wide variety of fields, he said.

It is technologically possible to create vaccine based on the genetic code of a flu virus strain including this one, researchers said. Several companies are already making H5N1 vaccines.

Research is ongoing to accelerate the amount of vaccine doses available by using adjuvants, which are agents that modify the effects of vaccines, Fauci said. There is also work ongoing into using computational sequencing to anticipate every possible influenza strain that could emerge, such that a databank could be established to prepare for the outbreak of any one of them, he said.

"Right now we're in a much, much better position than we were when we had vaccine available after the peak of the 2009 H1N1 two years ago," Fauci said.