China says bird flu virus in humans mutating

Nov 28 9:50 AM US/Eastern
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The H5N1 strain of bird flu seen in human cases in China has mutated as compared with strains found in human cases in Vietnam.

Chinese labs have found that the genetic order of the H5N1 virus seen in humans infected in China is different from that found in humans in Vietnam, Xinhua news agency reported Monday.

In China's human cases, the virus has mutated "to a certain degree," health ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an was quoted as saying.

"But the mutation cannot cause human-to-human transmission of the avian flu," he noted.

China this month confirmed its first three human cases of bird flu, two of which were fatal. The disease has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003.

Health officials fear that the virus could mutate to the extent where it is easily transmitted from human-to-human, an event that could lead to a global pandemic capable of killing hundreds of millions of people.

Wild ducks test positive for H5 avian flu in Canada

CP - 26th November 2005

HALIFAX - Officials confirmed Friday that 35 wild birds sampled in the Maritimes tested positive for H5 avian influenza viruses, but said they did not believe any were carrying the virulent strain of H5N1 avain flu responsible for widespread poultry outbreaks in Southeast Asia.

The infected birds, mostly black ducks and mallards, were found largely in an area around the Tantramar marshes near the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick border. One positive case was found in Prince Edward Island. All of the birds were said to be in good health, leading scientists to believe they were not carrying the strain that has killed at least 68 people overseas.

"I don't call it a concern whatsoever," Dr. Pierre-Yves Daoust of the Atlantic Veterinary College in Charlottetown said Friday. "These are still preliminary results, but 35 of them were positive."

But further tests need to be done to fully identify the viruses and conclusively rule out any link to the Asian virus. That testing, which will be done at the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg, will include comparing the genetic sequences of the viruses to the Asian H5N1.

Bird-flu tests exacting work

Staff run thousands of checks each day

KULTIDA SAMABUDDHI

For almost two years Nattakarn Tipmom has been working late into the night and on holidays in a small makeshift laboratory packed with virus diagnostic equipment, poultry samples, and several bottles of the H5N1 bird flu virus primer.

Ms Nattakarn, 27, was a bacterial disease researcher at the National Institute of Animal Health (NIAH), under the Livestock Development Department. She was moved to the virology division early last year to help test the huge number of fowl samples for the avian influenza virus.

Her tasks centre on preparing samples of poultry organs, tissues or droppings and testing them for the virus, using egg inoculation and real-time PCR (polymerase chain reaction) methods.

She works with 40 other veterinarians and scientists. Each day they must check over a thousand eggs used to isolate the bird-flu virus, measure out chemicals used for diagnosis, study the virus's DNA, analyse and verify the test results and then enter them in a database.

They are also tasked with keeping watch for any virus mutation that is resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) or that might cause a flu pandemic.

Whenever there is a bird flu outbreak, up to 5,000 samples arrive from 10 central provinces, including Bangkok, for testing every day.

The results must be confirmed by other diagnostic methods and sent to the livestock chief and the agriculture and cooperatives minister, who then release the information to the public.

The standard diagnosis process takes 8-10 days.

"I'm exhausted," said Ms Nattakarn. "I've had no time to take a break since bird flu was confirmed here. Samples keep flowing in and we have no choice but to get the job done in the most accurate and timely manner. I like this job. But I'm worried because work overload increases the chance of error," the scientist said.

Lab staff working with highly contagious diseases like the H5N1 virus are required to be in good health and of clear mind because they must strictly follow diagnosis and safety protocols.

"My family always tell me to be careful. But I'm confident that as long as I and my team strictly follow laboratory safety rules, we will be safe," Ms Nattakarn said.

Located in Kasetsart University, the 18-year-old institute had a low profile until the first wave of bird flu struck in January 2004 _ and the NIAH confirmed the first case of bird flu in dead poultry from a farm in Suphan Buri province.

Established in 1986 with financial and technical support from the Japanese government, the NIAH is the country's reference laboratory for confirming diagnoses of animal diseases, including avian influenza.

The agency has seven regional offices which keep watch on disease outbreaks in commercial animals, including poultry, pigs and cattle.

Patchima Indrakamhang, acting director of NIAH, said the personnel shortage was a major problem as samples just kept flowing in. Staff were overworked and lab space short.

Since the first flare-up of avian influenza, the NIAH had brought in scientists from various sections such as pathology, bacteriology, parasitology, biochemistry and toxicology, and the leptospirosis centre, to support bird flu diagnosis.

The sample volume was high because the Livestock Development Department was implementing "x-ray" operations twice a year. This meant fowl samples must be collected every day from every household that raises poultry for testing and routine surveillance.

Dr Patchima said the institute was planning to build a new laboratory which would have a higher safety standard, or biosecurity level, than the existing ones.

The NIAH's labs currently apply safety standard level 2, which was not enough to deal with the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus. The new laboratory units would operate at biosecurity level 3 to ensure that the lethal virus would not infect staff or leak into the outside environment, she said.

Ladda Trongwongsa, head of the pathology division, said using the NIAH's scientists for bird flu diagnosis had stalled other research and development projects.

"We need to do research to help Thailand cope with newly-emerging animal diseases, including avian flu. But the scientists have had to put aside other research projects because we have been overwhelmed with the routine job of testing chicken samples," said Dr Ladda.

Between October 2004 and September 2005, the NIAH tested 219,930 samples, _ including 74,684 chickens, 62,640 ducks, 39,197 goats, 22,429 cows and 11,333 pigs.

A greater capacity for diagnosis of the H5N1 virus was needed to fight the disease, the NIAH's senior virologist said.

But cooperation from people and poultry raisers in complying with the government's bird flu control and prevention measures was more crucial, she said.

Controlling the outbreak was the first step in combating bird flu, she said.

H5N1 bird flu found in wild birds in central Canada

UPDATED: 10:44, November 20, 2005

Wild birds in Canada's central province of Manitoba have tested positive for a low-pathogenic subtype of the H5N1 avian flu virus, a health official said on Saturday.

The strains are from the family of North American H5N1 viruses, not the forms circulating in Southeast Asia, said Dr. Brian Evans, chief veterinary officer at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency ( CFIA).

"I want to emphasize that the H5N1 subtype detected in Manitoba is completely distinct from the strain currently present in Asia," said Evans

"From a genetic perspective, there are significant strain differences in their structure," he said.

In addition, officials isolated an H5N3 subtype in two birds from Quebec, as part of a cross-country surveillance program to find what avian flu viruses are being carried by wild ducks in this country.

"Finding only low pathogenic avian influenza means that these viruses would cause only mild disease, if any at all, if introduced into domestic birds," Evans said.

Meanwhile, a commercial farm in British Columbia's Fraser Valley remains under quarantine after a duck was found infected with a strain of H5 bird flu on Friday.

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Three more bird flu suspected cased reported in eastern Thailand

UPDATED: 15:03, November 20, 2005


Three more suspected bird flu patients have been reported in Thailand's eastern Chacherngsao Province, all are children aged between three to 11 years old, reported the Thai News Agency Saturday.

The three patients, two girls aged 11 and three and one four- year-old boy, whose families raise chickens, were admitted to a hospital in the province's municipal area earlier this week.

They all showed bird flu-like symptoms after chickens in their families died suspiciously.

Provincial public health officials have reported the three new avian flu suspected cases to the Ministry of Public Health.

UN to set up bird flu warning system

Posted at 11:05am on 19 Nov 2005

The United Nations is to set up a bird flu early warning system to alert countries of incoming migratory birds that could be carrying the deadly virus.

The system, which will take one to two years to become operational, will provide precise details of the types of wild birds, arrival times and destinations.

Robert Hepworth, a UN official who heads the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), says it is hoped the system will give countries enough time to prepare.

"Migrations don't all occur on the same day or even at the same time as they are sometimes affected by either local or seasonal variations in climate," he said. "So we would need to have a system whereby there was sufficient warning."

World leaders are trying to control a growing outbreak of the H5N1 avian influenza, which has spread to poultry in several Asian and European countries.

The virus has killed 67 people since late 2003.

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Does bird flu have wings? Experts debate risk

November 20, 2005

BY MARILYNN MARCHIONE AND MALCOLM RITTER

History is supposed to teach. But past flu pandemics, it turns out, don't teach much about whether today's bird flu will become a human megakiller or just make some scientists and officials look like Chicken Little.

In a viral sense, the sky has fallen three times in the last century -- 1918, 1957 and 1968 -- when "superflu" strains killed millions more people than annual flu epidemics routinely do.

Back then, there weren't surveillance systems or modern genetic tools to detect and document viruses as they evolved into killer strains. Because scientists don't know how that evolution happened or how long it took, they can't tell us whether what we're seeing with now is the runup to a pandemic.

"My crystal ball doesn't allow me to answer that," said Dr. Frederick Hayden, a University of Virginia flu expert.

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FluWrap: Ominous Mutations Reported

By Kate Walker
Washington (UPI) Nov 14, 2005

Vietnamese scientists say new research suggests that avian influenza has mutated into a form that could be transmissible between humans.

The Ho Chi Minh Pasteur Institute has decoded 24 samples of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, taken from both birds and humans. The results indicate a number of different mutations in the virus.

A report published on the Institute's Web site said: "The H5N1 type that infected people and waterfowl in early 2005 has several mutations focusing in the important functional parts of the surface proteins. There has been a mutation allowing the virus to breed effectively on mammal tissue and become highly virulent."

These small changes increase the virus' ability to breed in humans.

While this report does not herald the immediate arrival of the pandemic that has been widely feared since the first human death from avian influenza in 2003, it does show that conditions have changed, making the imminent arrival of a pandemic more possible.

Meanwhile, more cases of bird flu have been reported across Asia.

-- Taiwan has found another strain of avian influenza, H7N3, which is highly pathogenic and able to infect humans.

The strain was discovered in droppings left by a migratory bird, and other birds in the area are currently being tested for the presence of H7N3 antibodies. No dead birds have been found in the area around the droppings.

H5 and H7 are the only avian influenza subtypes known to be found in highly pathogenic outbreaks of the disease.

-- Indonesia reported Monday that a 20-year-old woman has died of bird-flu.

In Jakarta, tests for avian influenza are currently being conducted on samples taken from a 13-year-old girl who died over the weekend.

-- Vietnam and China both announced Monday that they were investigating suspected cases of avian flu in humans, although results are yet to be confirmed.

China's Liaoning province, the site of several avian outbreaks last week, is looking into a suspected human case of avian influenza. No human cases have yet been confirmed in the country, but the World Health Organization has sent officials to the southern province of Hunan, where three cases of pneumonia have aroused suspicion.

-- Also in China, the Ministry of Agriculture has confirmed a further outbreak of H5N1 in the country's eastern province of Anhui. Some 126,000 birds have been culled within 3 kilometers (approximately 2 miles) of the outbreak.

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Bird flu pandemic is inevitable - WHO chief

Alexander Higgins
November 08 2005 at 02:22AM

Geneva - A deadly new global pandemic of human influenza is inevitable and suffering will be "incalculable" unless the world is ready, the chief of the United Nations health agency said on Monday. The World Bank estimated the economic cost to be $800-billion (about R5,4-trillion).

"We have been experiencing a relentless spread of avian flu" among migratory birds and domestic poultry, Lee Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organisation, told a meeting of 600 health experts, the first attempt to devise a global strategy in case the bird flu virus changes to transmit easily among humans.

Lee stressed that a human flu pandemic had yet to begin anywhere in the world.

"However, the signs are clear that it is coming," he said, noting that a changed avian flu virus caused the deadly Spanish flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people in 1918 to 1919.

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Bird flu claims another victim after pandemic cost warning

STEPHANIE NEBEHAY, Geneva November 08 2005

VIETNAM confirmed the latest human death from bird flu early this morning, after the World Bank warned that a pandemic lasting a year may cost the global economy up to $800bn (£458bn).

The country's 42nd victim of the disease, and its first in more than three months, was a 35-year-old man from Hanoi.

He tested positive for the H5N1 strain after his death at a Hanoi hospital on October 29, said Nguyen Van Binh, deputy director of the Preventive Medicine Department under the Ministry of Health.

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H5 Wild Bird Flu In the United States?

Recombinomics Commentary
November 7, 2005

The announcement last week in Canada on frequent detection of H5 in wild birds in Canada is cause for concern. This weekend additional information raised questions about the monitoring of H5 in wild birds in the United States.

The initial announcement in Canada indicated H5 had been detected in 28 wild birds in Quebec and in 3 in Manitoba. This was followed by an announcement that 24% of wild birds tested in British Columbia were H5 positive. 14 were strong positives and the weaker positives were being retested.

Media services provide some additional information this weekend. No sequence or N subtype data has been released. The characterizations to date have been based on the lack of sick birds, either amount the wild population swabbed, or domestic poultry on nearby farms.

The samples tested thus far show evidence of dual infection. More than one H serotype have been identified in some birds. Therefore the viral isolates are being plaque purified to allow for testing of individual isolates, eliminating confusion that be come from mixed samples. These additional steps have delayed release of the sub-typing data until the end of this week.

Moreover, the weak positives from British Columbia are being re-tested and results from the other provinces are expected in two weeks.

Most if not all of the swabs were collected in August as part of a banding exercise and the birds tested were young. After swabbing and banding, the birds were released.

The widespread detection of H5 in August in southern Canada in young wild birds would suggest that some or most of those birds would now have migrated in the United States.

Although the US has described increased surveillance, there have been no reports on H5 detected in the United States. The lack of such reports raise questions about the sensitivity of the US surveillance
methods.

Currently H5 and H7 HPAI are notifiable diseases. Soon all H5 and H7 will be reportable.

Based on the data from Canada, it seems likely that H5 is well represented in the wild bird population in the US. It is unclear why such infections have not been detected and reported.

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Canada discovers H5 avian flu virus in wild birds

AFP
Oct 31 4:08 PM US/Eastern
The H5 avian influenza virus has been found in wild migratory birds in Canada, officials said, but it is unlikely the deadly H5N1 strain threatening Asia and Europe and there is no threat to human health.

The virus, whose subtype must still be determined, was detected in 28 ducks in the eastern province of Quebec and five in Manitoba in central Canada out of approximately 4,800 samples, said Jim Clark of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

"These findings do not indicate that we are dealing with a virus strain capable of causing significant illness. The evidence we've observed strongly indicates that these healthy birds were not infected with the same virus that is currently present in Asia," Clark said during a press conference.

The H5N1 bird flu virus has killed more than 60 people and prompted the culling of 140 million birds in Asia in the past two years. [...]

Tests continue to determine the N type of the virus.

More results are expected in the coming weeks. However, it may not be possible to definitively identify the virus subtype because researchers were not able to isolate a live virus from the samples, Clark said. [...]

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