Selecting the best candidate vaccine virus for potential pandemic H5N1 currently in circulation

Data are the result of the analysis of similarity of Influenza H5N1 virus based on H5 hemagglutinin amino acid sequence available – full length and globular domain. The dataset contains A) lists of the isolates and antigenic prototype used in the study, exhibited in tables; B) protein alignments files to select a representative isolates in North America; C) protein alignments files to select a representative isolates in South America; D) the BLAST analyses to determine the percentage of identity of H5 sequences among isolates (bird and human) and the antigenic prototypes of H5N1, H5N6 and H5N8 Candidate Vaccine Virus (CVVs); and E) the phylogenetic analysis to assess the relationship among the different isolates and CVVs.The dataset is related to the data note article “Selecting the best candidate vaccine virus for potential pandemic H5N1 currently in circulation” and the review submitted for publication “Pandemic H5N1: Alert is in the air (Recent occurrence, diversity and candidate vaccine virus selection)”.