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Bird Flu Scare Shakes Up The Valley

2007-07-10T14:44:00.000-07:00

Movement, Sale of Live Poultry Restricted Statewide

By Hannah Northey

HARRISONBURG — State officials hope to clip the wings of a possible avian flu outbreak in the Valley by canceling public events and sales involving live poultry, and prohibiting the application of poultry litter in 17 counties in Western Virginia until the end of the month.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is calling for the measures in response to Friday’s discovery of avian flu antibodies in a flock of 54,000 turkeys on an unidentified Shenandoah County farm. The antibodies were found in the birds, located on a farm west of Mount Jackson, during a "preslaughter" test.

Elaine Lidholm, director of communication for VDAC, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, is still trying to isolate the virus, and may identify what’s causing the antibodies today.

"The state doesn’t wait for confirmatory results because time is of the essence," Lidholm said.

Birds within a 6-mile radius of the farm have tested negative for the antibodies so far, said Hobey Bauhan, president of the Virginia Poultry Federation.

But Lidholm said the extra precautions are necessary because the detected antibodies match characteristics of H5, a low pathogenic strain of avian influenza that has the ability to mutate into a highly pathogenic form.

The scare has widespread implications in Rockingham County, which remains one of the top poultry producers in the nation, according to Bauhan.

Neighboring West Virginia also has responded by suspending all poultry shows and sales for the next 30 days, according to The Associated Press.

Code Red

Poultry farms are on "code red" security alerts, Lidholm said, and have stepped up surveillance, monitoring and biosecurity measures.

She said the farm where the virus was detected, which could not be identified due to security concerns, is under quarantine and that only workers can enter or leave the premises.

Bauhan said the flock owner is working with Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, USDA, VDAC and Shenandoah County officials to exterminate the birds properly and compost the carcasses. The composting process, which Bauhan said will produce a substance free of the virus, can be applied to the land.

Lidholm said officials will exterminate the birds this evening because they are concerned about people working in daytime temperatures forecast to reach the mid-90s.

"Normally, we would’ve put that flock down already," she said.

The flock owner and state officials are following standards established by the Virginia Poultry Disease Task Force, a group that formed after bird flu hit the Valley in April 2002, Bauhan said.

During that outbreak, the virus cost Virginia farmers $130 million on nearly 200 farms and the death of 4.7 million birds.

Bird Flu Blues

Lidholm said the restrictions on poultry shows and sales, which could be extended if necessary, will affect flea markets, 4-H competitions, commercial sales and country fairs that run from July to August.

But poultry-litter haulers may be hit even harder.

State Veterinarian Richard Wilkes ordered that no poultry litter, manure or bedding removed from poultry houses be applied to land at any location or moved from the farm of origin in 17 counties until July 30. Affected counties include Rockingham, Shenandoah, Page and Augusta, according to a press release.

Officials hope the restrictions will limit the spread of the virus, which can spread through infected birds’ saliva, nasal secretions and feces, which other birds then come in contact with, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

But Mark Deavers of Broadway, manager of Deavers Lime and Litter, said it’s unfair to restrict poultry-litter application and not the birds being sent to the processing plants.

"If the birds are good enough to go to market, the manure is good enough to spread," Deavers said.

Deavers, who operates four trucks that move 1,000 pounds of poultry litter a month along Interstate 81 from Winchester to Roanoke, said he’ll have to house the litter at storage sheds on the farms where it is produced until the end of July.

He said he’ll have to pay $6 for every ton he stores in the sheds, in addition to losing $20,000 a month while his trucks are idled.

"The trucks will have to sit and I’ll have to see if I can make the payments," he said. "I’ll just have to dig it all back out in a month and put it back on the trucks."

But Bauhan said the measures are necessary to prevent an outbreak and that restrictions on the movement of litter could be lifted once tests show the virus isn’t spreading.

"In the early days, we need to do whatever we can to make sure this doesn’t turn into a widespread outbreak," he said.

For More Information

To find out more about safety on the farm, visit www.vapoultry.com.

Contact Hannah Northey at 574-6274 or hnorthey@dnronline.com

International summit on bird flu amid rising fears of pandemic

2007-06-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

John Ross
The Scotsman
Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:01 EDT

An International summit on bird flu opens in Scotland today, amid growing fears that the deadly virus could cause a pandemic.

About 30 experts from 15 countries will gather in Aviemore for the two-day event following a similar meeting in Nairobi last year.

It has been organised by the Avian Flu Task Force under the United Nations' international convention on migratory species, and includes delegates from Europe, Africa, South America and Asia.

They will review outbreaks of avian flu around the world, which have led to the deaths of 191 people since 2003, and examine issues including the surveillance of wild birds in relation to the disease.

Delegates will also discuss contingency planning and response strategies for outbreaks and what information is needed to understand potential infection routes and further local spread.

Professor Colin Galbraith, director of policy and advice at Scottish Natural Heritage, who is a member of the task force, said: "Bird flu is one of the biggest international challenges that exists today. It knows no boundaries. Scientists across the world must work together to understand the nature of the disease and to contain any outbreaks.

"It is crucial there is ongoing contact between countries and we share and learn from each other. The range of delegates and countries represented is a reflection of the seriousness of this issue across the world.

"In Scotland, we have a valuable contribution to make in terms of our contingency planning and in relation to the monitoring of wild birds."

More than 300 people worldwide have been affected by the avian flu virus, with 191 deaths since its discovery in Asian poultry stocks in 2003.

To date, there have been three confirmed cases of bird flu in Britain. In February, 159,000 birds were slaughtered on a Suffolk farm belonging to Bernard Matthews after the H5N1 virus was discovered. In April 2006, a dead swan was found on the slipway of the harbour at Cellardyke in Fife.

The death of 15 chickens on a farm in Conwy, North Wales in May, was caused by a less virulent strain of avian flu -H7N2.

Last week, a four-year-old boy in Cairo tested positive for bird flu, bringing to 37 the number of people in Egypt infected with the virus, including 15 who died.

Most of the fatalities have been women or girls whose families raise poultry and who had daily contact with chickens or turkeys.

Egypt is one of the countries most affected by the H5N1 strain outside Asia as it lies on a main route for migratory birds, which are believed to have brought the disease.

The Czech Republic's first case of bird flu in poultry was reported in Prague last week; about 1,800 turkeys died in the outbreak. Until now, bird flu has been detected there only in wild swans.

Earlier this year, three outbreaks occurred near Moscow.

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Bird flu cases increase to six in Germany

2007-06-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Germany confirmed the H5N1 bird flu virus in three more wild birds in the southern state of Bavaria on Monday, bringing the total infected cases to six since last weekend.

Since three wild bird found dead in Nuremberg in northern Bavaria tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain on Sunday, three more cases have been confirmed, with five swans and one goose infected, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, a veterinary institution, said on Monday.

Local authorities in Nuremberg has established a restricted zone within a radius of about four km and ordered local poultry farmers to confine all poultry to closed stalls. Nuremberg officials also warned dog owners not to allow their pets to run freely in the quarantine zone.

Although the German government did not expect the Nuremberg outbreak to spread to other regions, German Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer warned that the virus was still present in the environment.

The H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in geese and turkeys in a total of four farms in Hungary, Britain and the Czech Republic this year, but not yet in wild birds.

According to the World Health Organization, the H5N1 virus has killed nearly 200 people out of more than 300 cases globally since 2003. Health experts fear that H5N1 could some day develop the characteristics of seasonal flu and begin spreading easily among people, causing a global outbreak that could kill millions.
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Hospital workers receive pandemic training

2007-05-19T16:34:00.000-07:00

Staff at Johnstown's Memorial Medical Center are preparing for the worst-case scenario by conducting a five-day mock training session.

Staff kicked off the training by preparing for the bird-flu virus. The scenario was that the H5N1 virus was confirmed in Thailand, then a man who recently visited China came to Memorial Medical Center with respiratory symptoms similar to the H5N1.

In the scenario, the patient had also infected some of his family and co-workers. Next, the staff practiced for a massive influx of patients.

Hospital officials said the hypothetical situation prepares staff members for many components that come along with a pandemic.

Pandemics have broken out twice in the past 150 years: the Spanish flu in 1918 and the Asian flu in 1957.

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Philippines Bans U.S. Poultry After Bird Flu Virus Found In West Virginia Fowl

2007-05-06T17:51:00.000-07:00

May 6, 2007 11:28 a.m. EST

Komfie Manalo - AHN Correspondent

Manila, Philippines (AHN) - Philippine Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the Philippine government is imposing a ban on poultry importations from West Virginia in the U.S. after authorities there confirmed of an outbreak of the deadly H5N2 bird flu virus in a turkey farm.

Yap said the ban on imports include domestic and wild birds and their products, as well as day-old chicks and eggs from West Virginia. He said the ban is aimed at preventing the entry of avian influenza into the country.

The Philippines and Singapore are the only Asian countries that remain free of the deadly virus.

H5N2 virus is considered milder that the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has killed at least 172 out of 291 people known to have been infected since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

The Philippines is one of the major importers of poultry from the United States. The countries of Cuba, Japan, Russia and Taiwan have already imposed similar bans on poultry or poultry products from West Virginia.

Laos teenager dies from bird flu

2007-03-14T19:50:00.001-07:00

A 15-year-old girl from Laos has died from the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu, becoming the country's first official fatality from the disease.

The Laos health ministry said the girl, who lived near the capital Vientiane, died while undergoing treatment at a hospital in neighbouring Thailand.

A 42-year-old woman, who also lived close to Vientiane, died of suspected bird flu a few days ago.

Tests have yet to confirm whether she died of the H5N1 virus.

A World Health Organization spokeswoman said last week that there was no link between the two cases.

Globally, more than 160 people have died of bird flu since late 2003. Most have been in East Asia, with Indonesia registering more human deaths than any other country.

But the virus has also spread to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Millions of birds across the world have died or been culled because of the disease.

At the moment, the virus is essentially confined to birds and remains hard for people to catch.

But there is a fear that it could mutate to a form which is easily passed from human to human, triggering a pandemic and potentially putting millions of people's lives at risk.

WHO Still Hoarding H5N1 Sequence Data

2006-07-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

Recombinomics Commentary
July 12, 2006

One possibility is that the father simply caught a different strain of virus from birds, although other mutations in his virus are similar to those in the strain isolated from his son.

None of the sequence data from the Indonesian cluster has been deposited in public databases - access is restricted to a small network of researchers linked to the WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

But Paul Gully, who joined the WHO two months ago as senior adviser to Margaret Chan, head of the agency's pandemic-flu efforts, defends the agency's position. He points out that the WHO's priority is investigating outbreaks, not academic research. And he adds that although calls for more complete genome data and wider sharing of samples are "a valid point", labs are stretched during outbreaks, and don't have the time or resources to do high-quality sequencing.

He agrees that sharing samples with other researchers would allow such work to be done. But he says the WHO must work within the constraints set by its member states - they own the data, and decide whether to share it. "As more countries share data, hopefully that research will get done," he says.

The WHO has not formally asked Indonesia to share the sequences, Gully adds. "We would rather wait and see what Indonesia decides."

The above comments from tomorrow's Nature highlight the dangers of H5N1 spread in large familial clusters, and clearly demonstrates WHO's unwillingness to release the sequence data they are hoarding at the Los Alamos flu database.

The large number of polymorphisms in the father of the nephew supports a dual infection in the father, He acquired one of the rare polymorphisms from his son via recombination. The polymorphisms were not evenly distributed, indicating there was also reassortment. Dual infections lead to rapid genetic change. Moreover, testing of patients in Indonesia remains poor.

Most of the human sequences in Indonesia do not match any published avian sequence, although a large number of bird sequences from Indonesia have been made public in databases or have been presented at scientific meetings. H5N1 bird flu is rapidly evolving in Indonesia, but the evolution may not be in avian hosts.

The testing remains poor because a connection with dead or dying birds is required for H5N1 testing, yet the only match for the human H5N1 has been H5N1 from a cat (see phylogenetic tree)..

Indonesia has already indicated the data can be released, but WHO refuse to make such a request, so the data hoarding continues.

These sequences should be released immediately.

Philadelphia Bird Market Closed After Positive Bird Flu Tests

2006-07-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

A live bird market in Philadelphia was temporarily closed Wednesday after birds there tested positive for a type of avian influenza, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture said in a press release.

Stephanie Meyers, press secretary for the state agriculture department, told Dow Jones Newswires the signs point to a mild, or low-pathogenic, strain of avian influenza.

There have been no bird deaths and no birds are sick, she said.

The discovery of the avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, was the result of routine surveillance, the release said.

"Mild strains of avian influenza are very common in poultry, and we have no reason to think this strain is any different," Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff in the release.

Meyers said while the exact strain of avian influenza isn't known yet, the department has sent samples to be tested and expects to have the results in three to five days.

The closure of the bird market was simply a routine precaution, the department said.

"We have the measures in place to detect avian influenza quickly, and this occurrence shows that our procedures are working," Wolff said. "As soon as the department was made aware of the positive test, state and federal veterinarians were sent to the site to close the market, dispose of the birds and clean the facility according to state protocols."

The department is investigating the distribution channels to and from the market to ensure isolation of all sources of the virus, the release said.

Source: Angie Pointer; Dow Jones Newswires; 312-750-4075; angie.pointer@dowjones.com

New York unveils bird flu emergency plan

2006-07-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

AFP

Mon July 10, 2006

NEW YORK - New York officials unveiled an emergency response plan to limit the havoc a global flu pandemic might wreak on one of the world's densest, busiest cities.

The plan, drawn up by the Department of Health with input from all the main city agencies, covers critical health areas involved in a pandemic, including disease monitoring, laboratory capacity, vaccine and medicine delivery, as well as hospital preparedness.

"We have to be ready for the possibility -- no matter how remote," said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

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Bird Flu Passed From Son to Father, W.H.O. Says

2006-06-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
The New York Times
June 23, 2006

An Indonesian man who died of H5N1 bird flu caught it from his 10-year-old son, the first laboratory-confirmed case of human-to-human transmission of the disease, according to a World Health Organization investigation of an unusual family cluster of bird-flu cases.

The investigators also found that the virus mutated slightly when the son had the disease, although not in any way that would allow it to pass more readily among people. Flu viruses like H5N1 mutate constantly, although most of the mutations are insignificant biologically; that appears to be have been the case in the Indonesian cluster.

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Genetic Evidence of Human Transmission of H5N1 in Indonesia

2006-06-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

Recombinomics Commentary
June 23, 2006

Genetic sequencing of a virus sample taken from a 10-year-old boy who died from the H5N1 avian influenza strain showed a minute change that was also found in a virus sample taken from his father who later died from the virus, said Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the United Nations health agency in Geneva.

``We have seen a genetic change that confirms in a laboratory that the virus has moved from one human to another,'' Thompson said in an interview. The change in the virus ``doesn't seem to have any significance in terms of the pathology of the disease or how easily it's transmitted,'' he said.

Human-to-human transmission had previously been suspected as the cause of infection in seven members of the Indonesian family from the island of Sumatra. The cases attracted international attention because they represent the largest reported instance in which avian flu may is likely to have spread among people. They also provide the first evidence of a three-person chain of infection.

The above comments include the first reported genetic link supporting human-to-human transmission of H5N1 bird flu. In the past, the evidence was largely limited to disease onset dates. However, the gaps between the onset date of the index case and other family members has been present in the vast majority of clusters, dating back to the 2003 cluster in the Hong Kong family that had visited Fujian Province.

These data add to the accumulation of evidence for human-to-human transmission within families and between families in Turkey. These clusters have involved several versions of H5N1 including clade 1 and clade 2 and are common.

However, the cases in Karo created the largest and deadliest reported cluster in Indonesia, which highlights minor changes in the H5N1 genes. These changes are not public because the human sequences have been withheld and are sequestered in a private WHO database. Although Indonesia has indicated that the data could be released, only HA and NA sequences from the first confirmed case in Indonesia have been released.

These sequences should be released immediately.

Bird flu human transmission probable in Indonesia

2006-06-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

Bird flu human transmission probable in Indonesia

JAKARTA, June 10 (Xinhua) -- Human-to-human transmission of bird flu probably occurred in Indonesia's seven cluster cases, a minister said. But he ruled out a pandemic of H5N1 across the archipelago.

"Limited human-to-human transmission may have occurred in small clusters in the country. It has not only happened in several regions in Indonesia but also in Azerbaijan and other places in the world," Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie said Friday after a meeting with agencies involved in curbing the spread of the disease.

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Highly pathogenic strain of bird flu detected in Hungary, says EU

2006-06-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

Time is GMT + 8 hours

Posted: 9-Jun-2006 22:56 hrs

Hungarian authorities have detected a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu in a flock of domestic geese although tests are yet to show whether it is the deadly H5N1 strain.
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The European Union's executive arm said Friday officials have slaughtered all 2,300 geese in the flock and are also culling poultry and ducks within a one kilometer (mile) radius of the site in Bacs-Kiskun, southern Hungary.
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Samples had been sent to the European Union's reference laboratory in Weybridge, outside London, to determine whether the outbreak is the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
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If confirmed, it would mark the fifth outbreak of H5N1 in domestic poultry in an EU state after earlier cases in France, Sweden, Germany and Denmark. Outbreaks of H5N1 have also been detected in wild birds in thirteen EU countries.
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More than 120 people have died from bird flu since late 2003, most of them in Asia, and world health officials fear that the H5N1 virus could mutate into one spread via human-to-human contact. — AFP

Nurse Hospitalized With H5N1 Bird Flu Symptoms in Bandung

2006-06-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

Recombinomics Commentary
June 2, 2006

A 25-year old nurse identified by her initials as `Ci` is currently being treated at the Hasan Sadikin Hospital here for bird flu-like symptoms.

"We could not confirm whether she is positive of having been infected by avian influenza virus or not, although she had earlier have contacts with siblings, 18-year old Ad and 10-year old Ai, who died of bird flu virus recently," he said.

The ailing nurse has never had contact with poultry, but she had treated the sibling when being treated at Ujungberung Hospital, where Ci works as a nurse.

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Bird flu kills 8-year-old Indonesian girl, country sees spike in cases

2006-06-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

JAKARTA, Indonesia

An 8-year-old girl has died of bird flu, a health official said Friday, citing local tests, as a spike in human cases has put Indonesia on pace to soon become the world's hardest-hit country.

The World Health Organization has yet to confirm the death, which would bring the country's official death toll from the H5N1 virus to 37.

The girl, from Pamulang on the outskirts of Jakarta, died late Thursday after apparently coming into contact with sick poultry, said Nyoman Kandun, a senior Health Ministry official.

The girl's 10-year-old brother died three days earlier with similar flu-like symptoms, but no samples were taken, said Dr.Hariadi Wibisono, a senior official at the national Health Department. The boy died in an emergency room before being treated, and the family immediately took him home for burial, he said.

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Indonesia slaughtering poultry in bird flu area: 1 death every 2 1/2 days

2006-06-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

03:48:09 EDT Jun 1, 2006
MARGIE MASON

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Officials began slaughtering poultry Thursday in an Indonesian village where preliminary tests showed a 15-year-old boy had died from bird flu, as the country struggled with a sudden rise in deaths averaging one every 2 1/2 days.

All chickens will be killed within one kilometre of the boy's house in the Tasikmalaya district of West Java province, said Budi Utama, head of the local animal and fisheries agency. Indonesian tests on Wednesday found that the boy had contracted the virulent H5N1 bird flu virus, and officials were awaiting confirmation from a World Health Organization-sanctioned laboratory in Hong Kong.

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Bird Flu Explodes in Indonesia

2006-06-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

By MARGIE MASON
AP Medical Writer
May 31, 2006

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia averaged one human bird flu death every 2 1/2 days in May, putting it on pace to soon surpass Vietnam as the world's hardest-hit country.

The latest death, announced Wednesday, was a 15-year-old boy whose preliminary tests were positive for the H5N1 virus. It comes as international health officials express growing frustration that they must fight Indonesia's bureaucracy as well as the disease.

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Bird traders fingered in spread of avian flu

2006-05-31T21:14:00.000-07:00

May 31 2006 at 03:42AM

By Svetlana Kovalyova

Rome - The multi-billion-dollar trade in poultry and wild birds, especially illegal trading, may have helped spread deadly bird flu around the world, leading bird flu experts said on Tuesday.

The virus has killed 127 of the 224 people it has infected since re-emerging in Asia in late 2003, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

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Indonesia boy tests positive locally for bird flu

2006-05-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

2006/6/1
JAKARTA, Reuters

A 15-year-old Indonesian boy has tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu, a senior health ministry official said on Wednesday, citing results of a local laboratory.

The results are not considered definitive and samples are on their way to a World Health Organisation-accredited laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation. "Usually, if local tests are positive it's also positive in Hong Kong," said Hariadi Wibisono, director of animal-borne disease control at the Health Ministry.

The boy, from Tasikmalaya town in west Java, was admitted to hospital on May 29 and died a day later.

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Flu kills every 2.5 days in Indonesia

2006-05-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

June 1, 2006 - 12:30PM

Indonesia averaged one human bird flu death every 2 1/2 days in May and will soon surpass Vietnam as the country hardest-hit by the disease.

The latest death, announced on Wednesday, was a 15-year-old boy whose preliminary tests were positive for the H5N1 virus.

It comes as international health officials express growing frustration that they must fight Indonesia's stifling bureaucracy as well as the disease.

Indonesia, a massive archipelago of 17,000 islands that is home to 220 million people, has a patchwork of local, regional and national bureaucracies that often send mixed messages, officials said.

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115 outbreaks of bird flu reported in Romania

2006-05-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

UPDATED: 11:18, May 30, 2006

A total of 115 outbreaks of avian flu had now been reported in Romania, according to Agriculture Ministry spokesman Adrian Tibu on Monday.

The number of reported outbreaks had increased by 27 on Monday alone, Tibu said. The total as of Sunday was just 88 outbreaks.

The bird flu was spreading very rapidly in Romania, Tibu added.

Currently, just two of the six districts of the Romanian capital have not reported any outbreaks.

Local authorities on Monday continued large-scale disinfection and quarantines in the districts with reported outbreaks, as well as culling poultry raised by residents.

LINK

Flurry of bird flu cases worry experts

2006-05-31T13:55:00.000-07:00

May 30, 2006

Scientists are worried about a sudden flurry of human bird flu cases in Indonesia, warning that a failure to control the situation may raise the chances of a virus mutation and lead to a pandemic.

However, local experts say all six of the recent infections in humans were probably linked to diseased birds: investigations found that in three cases, the victims fell sick a few days after chickens died in their villages. Three of the six died.

"To me, the most likely cause is H5N1 from animals," said I Nyoman Kandun, director-general of communicable disease control.

Indeed, apart from an 18-year-old and his 10-year-old sister, the four other cases were isolated infections and the victims lived far apart from one another.

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Romania culls birds as avian flu outbreaks multiply

2006-05-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

26 May 2006 14:17:42 GMT

By Radu Marinas

BUCHAREST, May 26 (Reuters) - Romania has reported more than 70 outbreaks of avian flu in birds over the past two weeks, mostly in the central region of Transylvania, a month after the strain was said to have been eradicated in the Black Sea state.

The latest outbreaks originated at a poultry farm in the county of Brasov, some 170 km (100 miles) north of Bucharest, from where live chickens were sold to peasants across the country without health certificates, the government says.

"The bird flu virus has been confirmed in 75 localities from 13 counties. There are also 35 suspect locations. The national institute for animal health is further testing suspect deaths in fowl," the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.

Three districts in the capital Bucharest are among those affected. Over the past 10 days alone, authorities have culled 450,000 birds to prevent the spread of the virus, which a World Health Organisation expert says "has broken out very rapidly."

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A New Bird Flu Cluster

2006-05-24T18:15:00.000-07:00

Web Exclusive| Science & Health

Eight family members in rural Indonesia fall ill, and medical investigators are racing to figure out why

By BRYAN WALSH/HONG KONG

Posted Wednesday, May. 24, 2006
Public fears of bird flu seem to have abated in recent weeks, but scientists know the world is always one viral mutation away from a deadly pandemic. That fact has been driven home again by a worrying cluster of human bird flu cases in rural Indonesia that could represent the first time the H5N1 virus has managed to pass from human to human to human. The cluster likely began with a 37-year-old woman who hosted a family pork roast on April 29 in the Indonesian village of Kubu Sembilang in north Sumatra. The woman had become sick on April 27, and as she worsened, several family members slept in the same small room as she did. By the first week of May six more members of the family had fallen ill with avian flu. The first woman died on May 4 and was buried before any tissue samples could be taken, but doctors were able to confirm H5N1 in the remaining family members, all but one of whom have died. An eighth family member, a 32-year- old man, became sick on May 15 and died May 22; he may have caught the virus while caring for his infected 10-year-old son, who died of the disease on May 13.

The WHO has dispatched a team of investigators to the area, including experts from the organization's headquarters in Geneva, but they have been unable to find any evidence of contaminated poultry in the village that may have triggered the human infections. "If we can't find an external source that explains all seven confirmed cases, then we have to go with the theory that this is human to human," says Peter Cordingley, the spokesperson for the WHO's Western Pacific regional headquarters. Human to human transmission within a family is believed to have occurred at least twice before, in Thailand and Vietnam, although never involving this many people. But if the 10-year-old boy was infected by a family member, and then went on to infect his father, it would represent the first known time the virus had passed from human to human to human. "It's certainly possible," says Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesperson in Geneva.

That's a worrying threshold to cross, but the good news is that the virus doesn't seem to have spread outside the family. The 32-year- old man ran away from doctors after falling ill, and passed though four neighboring villages before he was apprehended, coming into contact with 33 people. All of them are currently under observation and being given the antiviral drug Tamiflu as a prophylactic, but none have shown signs of infection. Scientists have genetically sequenced two viruses isolated from the cluster and found no evidence of the kinds of significant mutations that would likely be necessary before the virus could pass easily from person to person. "The virus looks pretty much the same as other cases," says Dr. Guan Yi, an avian-flu expert at the University of Hong Kong who has seen the genetic sequences.

If those contacts remain healthy for the next week and a half, then the outbreak at Kubu Sembilang will likely be judged contained. But the cluster itself could remain a mystery. Villagers have been extremely uncooperative with investigators, complicating efforts to get samples from animals and forcing the WHO to set up its command hub 5 miles from the village. "We don't have a lot of access to the village right now," says Hartl. "But they've lost seven people. There's a lot of shock and grief they have to work through first." It's a reminder of the power bird flu still has to surprise—and to kill.

Human-to-human bird flu transmission confirmed, UN predicts death of 150 million people

2006-05-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

I am posting this article, but I don't know how reliable the source is.When I found the article I did a google search and it was there, when I checked back about 15 min. later the article was gone.

[ 24 May 2006 15:30 ]

Human-to-human transmission of bird flu has been confirmed in Indonesia (APA). The mutated form of the virus is the danger that scientists expected.

The spread of the bird flu virus from human to human can claim millions of lives. According to pessimistic forecasts of the UN experts, the spread of the virus from human to human may lead to the death of at least 150 million people. Russian head sanitary inspector Gennadi Inishenko predicts 50 million and Russian Emergencies Ministry predicts 27 million might die from this virus.
The possibility of spread of the H5N1 virus from human to human was confirmed in Indonesia. The virus has been found on three children, who stayed in the same room with the infected woman.
The World Health Organization has investigated the death of six of seven members of a family, who contracted the deadly virus in Indonesia. It was confirmed that the 10-year-old child contracted the virus from his aunt and it spread to the father and other members of the family. The WHO is now conducting a large-scale investigation into the case of human-to-human transmission of bird flu.
The Health Ministry spokesman Samaye Mammadova told APA that no emergency sanitary regime is due to be held in Azerbaijan related to the investigation of new mutated form of the bird flu virus. She said precautions are being implemented.
The H5N1 virus has already killed more than 120 people worldwide since 2003. It has also devastated poultry stocks. /APA/

human to human bird flu

WHO expresses concern about large human bird flu cluster in Indonesia

2006-05-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

04:30:36 EDT May 24, 2006

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - The United Nations health agency described the deaths of six Indonesian family members from bird flu as the most important development in the spread of the virus since 2003, saying the size of the cluster and difficulties in determining the source were real reasons for concern.

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Seven Indonesian Bird Flu Cases Linked to Patients, WHO Says

2006-05-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

May 23 (Bloomberg) -- All seven people infected with bird flu in a cluster of Indonesian cases can be linked to other patients, according to disease trackers investigating possible human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus.

A team of international experts has been unable to find animals that might have infected the people, six of whom have died, the World Health Organization said in a statement today. In one case, a 10-year-old boy who caught the virus from his aunt may have passed it to his father, the first time officials have seen evidence of a three-person chain of infection, an agency spokeswoman said.

Almost all of the 218 cases of H5N1 infections confirmed by the WHO since late 2003 can be traced to direct contact with sick or dead birds. Strong evidence of human-to-human transmission may prompt the global health agency to convene a panel of experts and consider raising the pandemic alert level, said Maria Cheng, an agency spokeswoman.

``Considering the evidence and the size of the cluster, it's a possibility,'' Cheng said in a telephone interview. ``it depends on what we're dealing with in Indonesia. It's an evolving situation.''

The 32-year-old father in the cluster of cases on the island of Sumatra was ``closely involved in caring for his son, and this contact is considered a possible source of infection,'' The WHO said in its statement. Three others, including the sole survivor in the group, spent a night in a ``small'' room with the boy's aunt, who later died and was buried before health officials could conduct tests for the H5N1 virus.

``All confirmed cases in the cluster can be directly linked to close and prolonged exposure to a patient during a phase of severe illness,'' the WHO said.

[human to human]

1 000s quarantined in Bucharest

2006-05-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

Bucharest - About 13 000 people were quarantined in the Romanian capital on Monday as troops and police sealed off streets in response to the city's second bird-flu outbreak, said officials.

The mayor of the southern fourth district, Adrian Inimaroiu, said residents would be cut off and all businesses in the area would be closed during the quarantine period of up to three weeks.

The move came after the agriculture ministry earlier on Monday confirmed the presence of the H5 bird-flu virus in dead chickens found in the neighbourhood, the latest of dozens of outbreaks of avian flu in Romania this spring.

Inimaroiu said, urging residents to stay calm, that "about 40 streets have been blocked" in the Luica quarter.

He said the quarantine would last for "a period of a week to 21 days and all the institutions in this quarter will be closed".

"About 2 500 birds from this area will be slaughtered as rapidly as possible," said the mayor.

A neighbourhood on the northern outskirts of the capital was put under quarantine on Sunday evening with fences blocking a dozen streets and police preventing anyone from going in or out, except for medical emergencies.

Two more bird flu deaths confirmed in Indonesia

2006-05-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

22 May 2006 08:31:35 GMT
Source: Reuters

JAKARTA, May 22 (Reuters) - Local tests have confirmed two more people have died of bird flu in Indonesia, a senior health ministry official said on Monday.

One of the victims belonged to a Sumatran family at the centre of fears of human-to-human transmission after six members of the family died this month of bird flu.

"One man from the same Sumatra cluster died this morning. He is the father of the child who died on May 13. He ran away after he received Tamiflu," said I Nyoman Kandun, director-general of communicable disease control at the health ministry.

"He was found in the village later but refused treatment," Kandun told reporters.

Local results on bird flu cases are not considered definitive and need confirmation from the World Health Organisation.

The WHO confirmed last week that six family members from Kubu Simbelang village in North Sumatra province were infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus.

Kandun said there was no evidence the H5N1 virus had mutated in the Kubu Simbelang cluster case, which has drawn global concern because officials have found no definitive source of the outbreak.

Most cases of human infection worldwide have been through contact with sick poultry or their droppings. Tests on poultry in the village were positive for the H5 subtype virus but more tests are need to confirm it they were infected with H5N1.

Tests on pigs have been positive for antibodies, suggesting they were recently infected with H5N1.

Kandun said a 38-year-old man from Jakarta who died last week had also been declared positive for bird flu by local tests.

The WHO has confirmed 32 fatalities from avian influenza in the world's fourth most populous nation, the second highest number of human deaths after Vietnam.

The virus has spread in birds at an alarming rate in recent months, sweeping through parts of Europe, down into Africa and across into South Asia.

It is difficult for humans to catch, but experts fear the virus could evolve into a form passes easily from human to human, causing a pandemic that could kill millions.

Testing for Bird Flu Begins in Alaska

2006-05-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

Thu May 18, 4:35 PM ET

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Federal scientists have started testing migratory birds for signs of a dangerous bird flu that could show up on this continent this spring.

The testing of shorebirds began Wednesday on an Anchorage coastal wildlife refuge, said Bruce Woods, spokesman with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

It's the first sampling of a summer-long project to swab birds for bird flu throughout the state. Nationwide, the goal is to sample 75,000 to 100,000 wild birds. In Alaska, about $4 million in federal money will be allocated to study about 15,000 birds, Woods said.

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Discovery of poultry exposed to bird flu virus was kept from public

2006-05-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

James Meikle
Thursday May 18, 2006
The Guardian

Government scientists found evidence of bird flu in poultry in October but did not report their concerns to the public, the Guardian can reveal. The scientists placed movement restrictions on a bird rescue centre in south-west England after finding evidence that 13 free-range geese had been exposed to an H5 virus, one of two types of virus most likely to become deadly to birds and a group known to be a health risk to people.

The restrictions, which lasted at least a week until further tests ruled out any infection, came shortly after the highly dangerous H5N1 strain had been found in imported birds kept in quarantine. No mention was made of the incident by the environment department, Defra, either then or during last month's scares caused by the dead swan at Cellardyke, Fife, which had H5N1, and by the outbreak of H7N3 on three farms in Norfolk.

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Laos finds first bird flu case since 2004

2006-05-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

Reuters - Thursday, May 18, 2006

BANGKOK - The H5N1 bird flu strain has been found in a duck in Laos, but there is no sign that the virus is spreading, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Wednesday.
The isolated case in a backyard farm 20 km (12 miles) south of Vientiane is the first since the Southeast Asian nation reported an outbreak among poultry in early 2004.

"We are doing surveillance and so far everything is negative," Ricarda Mondry, the FAO's chief technical adviser on avian influenza in Laos, told Reuters.

The duck was discovered in February by researchers on a surveillance project in the area. The case was reported recently to the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Ducks can be carriers of the disease without showing symptoms.

Idonesia's bird flu toll jumps to 30 with five more deaths

2006-05-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

AFP
Wednesday May 17, 2006

Indonesia's bird flu toll jumped to 30 on Wednesday after the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed five more people had died of the virus in the world's fourth most populous nation.

The WHO said four of the confirmed deaths came from a cluster in North Sumatra: a 19 and 17-year-old male, a 29-year-old female and an 18-month old baby. A fifth person, a 25-year-old male, was infected but alive, the agency said.

"WHO is carefully investigating these cases, as any possible cluster case raises increased suspicions that human-to-human transmission may have occurred," spokeswoman Sari Setiogi told AFP.

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Warning Issued That Bird Flu Virus May Have Mutated Into Highly Contagious Human Strain

2006-05-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

FULLERTON, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 05/15/2006 -- The recent news over the last few days of confirmed "clusters" being reported in Indonesia is posing the grim reality that the bird flu virus may have now mutated into a form that can be easily passed among humans. The current fatality rate for this particular strain of the H5N1 virus is 78% and appears to be somewhat Tamiflu resistant, which is different from the strain found in Turkey.

Once the virus has mutated, it will take 1 - 4 days before symptoms first appear because of what is known as the "incubation period." During this time frame of the initial mutation, the virus will have a chance to spread around the globe via airport travel, which will most likely result in simultaneous outbreaks around the world.

Some experts feel that this super-influenza virus will transform the world overnight into a situation resembling the New Orleans catastrophe. All deliveries to stores, restaurants and gas stations would immediately cease because people would either be too sick or too scared to attend their jobs. This would cause huge shortages in a matter of just a few days. People need to begin buying extra supplies today.

The best way to survive this super flu pandemic is to minimize contact with other people. This will require people to stay in their homes for an extended period of time. Without adequate food and water, this cannot be accomplished. In addition, if people wait too long before they begin buying extra supplies they may find that there are no supplies left to purchase.

If you would like more information on the quickly developing events, we would strongly encourage you to visit a very popular website that is attracting a lot of attention from around the world. This new website features a live discussion forum which allows people to post messages from around the world in real time conversation. This site can now be viewed at: www.Avianflutalk.com.

Indonesia probes bird flu cluster; WHO alerted

2006-05-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

15 May 2006 14:49:51 GMT
Source: Reuters

(Adds WHO comment from Geneva)

JAKARTA, May 15 (Reuters) - Indonesia is investigating an outbreak of H5NI bird flu in up to eight members of a North Sumatran family, six of whom have died, Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono said on Monday.

Five of the eight, including four of the dead, showed positive for avian flu in local tests, while three other family members were suspected cases, the minister said.

Apriyantono added that the deadly virus had not yet been found in local poultry, which is normally the source for infections in humans.

In Geneva, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was following the case closely because of the possibility of human-to-human infection.

Bird flu has killed 115 people, mostly in east Asia, since reappearing in 2003, with virtually all the victims catching the disease from poultry.

The United Nations' health agency is on alert for signs that the virus is mutating into one that can be easily transmitted between people, a development that could signal the start of a pandemic in which millions could die.

"It is something we are taking very seriously," said WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng about the Indonesian case. "Any time we have a possible cluster it raises suspicions that human-to-human transmission may have occurred," she told Reuters.

Experts have in the past said that cluster cases of possible bird flu cases among family members do not mean the virus is necessarily mutating. It could be caused by the close contact normal in families. There have been a number of such examples in Vietnam and Thailand, Cheng said.

"It may be that these people had common exposure, it may be that they caught the disease taking care of family members. Right now we do not know, but it is something that has caught our attention," she said.

Cheng said WHO hoped to know more in the next few days.

An Indonesian health ministry spokeswoman said blood samples of the five people who had tested positive locally had been sent to a WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation. Local tests are not considered definitive.

The WHO also sent a team to North Sumatra to investigate the case, said Sari Setiogi, a spokeswoman for the agency.

"So far, an examination of chickens, ducks and pigs around the victims' houses has turned out negative," Apriyantono told reporters on the sidelines of a Food and Agriculture Organisation meeting in Jakarta. "But we still have to thoroughly investigate it as it's a complicated case." (Additional reporting by Richard Waddington in Geneva)

The Bird Flu Hunters

2006-05-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

May 12, 2006

By Ullrich Fichtner, Ansbert Kneip and Gerald Traufetter

Bird flu has spread across the globe, but so far it poses little danger to humans. The World Health Organization has launched an ambitious project to battle the pandemic before it jumps the species barrier. The hurdles are many.

Each question about the virus triggers thousands of new questions. "We're in the middle of the problem," says Professor Yuen, a man who clearly has trouble sitting still, as he walks to the blackboard in the windowless conference room in Hong Kong's Queen Mary Hospital. The felt marker in his hand quickly glides across the surface, and within a few minutes the professor has outlined the global history of influenza in black and white. After listing annual figures, along with abbreviations identifying the different strains of the virus -- H2N2, H1N1 -- he taps the hastily written figures and, with the top edge of his glasses forming a line across his pupils, he asks: "And what do we learn from this? We learn that we know nothing, and that every calculation is taken from thin air."

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Two-week U.S. Northern Command excercises for pandemic flu outbreak

2006-05-11T19:07:00.000-07:00

May 10, 2006
WASHINGTON -

More than 5,000 U.S. and Canadian servicemembers are working with authorities in five U.S. states and two Canadian provinces to test their response capabilities to crises ranging from a major hurricane to a terrorist attack to a pandemic flu outbreak.

Ardent Sentry 2006, a two-week U.S. Northern Command exercise, kicked off May 8 to test military support to federal, provincial, state and local authorities while continuing to support the Defense Department's homeland defense mission, according to Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh, a NORTHCOM and North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman. The Canadian part of the exercise began May 1 and continues through May 12.

The goal is to give these players an opportunity to sharpen their ability to respond quickly and in a coordinated way to national crises, Butterbaugh said.

Already, active-duty, National Guard and Reserve participants operating in Colorado, Michigan, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, the Canadian provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick and adjacent waters have gotten plenty of opportunity to do so, said Mike Kucharek, another NORTHCOM and NORAD spokesman.

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Migrating Birds Didn't Carry Flu

2006-05-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
New York Times
May 11, 2006

ROME, May 10 - Defying the dire predictions of health officials, the flocks of migratory birds that flew south to Africa last fall, then back over Europe in recent weeks did not carry the deadly bird flu virus or spread it during their annual journey, scientists have concluded.

International health officials had feared that the disease was likely to spread to Africa during the southward migration and return to Europe with a vengeance during the reverse migration this spring. That has not happened - a significant finding for Europe, because it is far easier to monitor a virus that exists domestically on farms but not in the wild. "It is quiet now in terms of cases, which is contrary to what many people had expected," said Ward Hagemeijer, a bird flu specialist with Wetlands International, an environmental group based in the Netherlands that studies migratory birds.

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Bird Flu: WHO presses for quicer bird flu report.

2006-05-08T21:29:00.000-07:00

May 6, 10:29 PM EDT

DANANG, Vietnam (AP) -- Only half the world's human bird flu cases are being reported to the World Health Organization within two weeks of being detected - a response time that must be improved to avert a pandemic, a senior WHO official said Saturday.

Dr. Shigeru Omi, WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific, said it is estimated that countries would have only two to three weeks to stamp out, or at least slow, a pandemic flu strain after it began spreading in humans.
DANANG, Vietnam (AP) -- Only half the world's human bird flu cases are being reported to the World Health Organization within two weeks of being detected - a response time that must be improved to avert a pandemic, a senior WHO official said Saturday.

Dr. Shigeru Omi, WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific, said it is estimated that countries would have only two to three weeks to stamp out, or at least slow, a pandemic flu strain after it began spreading in humans.

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China reports new outbreak of bird flu

2006-05-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

Last Updated Fri, 05 May 2006 18:59:18 EDT
CBC News

China says there has been an outbreak of bird flu among wild birds in a remote area of Qinghai province.

The Agriculture Ministry says the outbreak was confirmed by the national bird flu laboratory, with the number of dead wild birds now at more than 120.

An outbreak of the H5N1 strain of the virus in Qinghai Lake in May 2005 killed thousands of birds.

China has reported at least 18 human bird flu infections, 12 of which have been fatal.
The reaction that occurred brought as much as four-tenths of an inch of rain, the heaviest rainfall this year, helping to "alleviate drought, add soil moisture and remove dust from the air for better air quality," Xinhua said.

Though unusual in many parts of the world, China has been tinkering with artificial rainmaking for decades, using it frequently in the drought-plagued north.

Last month, another artificial rainfall was generated to clear Beijing after the city suffered some of the fiercest dust storms this decade.

Fifth fatal human case of bird flu reported in Egypt

2006-05-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-05 03:32:39

CAIRO, May 4 (Xinhua) -- A 27-year-old Egyptian woman died of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu on Thursday, the fifth fatal human case in Egypt, the official MENA news agency reported.

Samah Abdel-Aziz Mohamed died at 3:45 p.m. (1245 GMT) after a heart resuscitation failed, the Egyptian health authorities said in a statement.

The woman, coming from el-Sharabiya district of Cairo, was the 13th human bird flu case since the outbreak of the deadly disease in Egypt in February.

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Bird flu outbreak confirmed in northwest China

2006-05-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-05 15:34:55

BEIJING, May 5 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture Friday confirmed outbreak of bird flu among wild birds in a remote area of Qinghai Province, northwest China.

The outbreak was confirmed by the national bird flu laboratory on Wednesday, and the number of dead wild bird had risen to 123 by Thursday, the ministry said on its website.

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US issues $1 billion in flu vaccine contracts

2006-05-05T19:06:00.000-07:00

By Lisa Richwine and Maggie Fox

Reuters

May 4, 2006

WASHINGTON -
Five companies received more than $1 billion in contracts to develop
new and better influenza vaccines, and to make them on U.S. territory,
the U.S. Health and Human Services Department said on Thursday.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc was awarded $274.75 million, MedImmune Inc. was
awarded $169.46 million, Novartis AG won $220.51 million, DynPort
vaccine, working with Baxter International Inc., won $40.97 million and
Solvay won $298.59 million.

The companies will all work to develop cell-based vaccines to fight influenza.

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Mild form of avian flu found in New Jersey

2006-05-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

Reuters

Mon May 1, 2006

NEW YORK - Authorities have discovered a mild form of avian influenza at a live bird market in New Jersey, but it is not the deadly H5N1 strain governments around the world are trying to contain, the state's agriculture department said.

"The strain was found in a live bird market in Camden County. None of the birds in the market died from this virus, which is an indicator that the virus was low pathogenic and not harmful to humans," said a statement by New Jersey's Agriculture Secretary Charles Kuperus which was posted on Friday.

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Indonesians Love Chicken, Bird Flu Scare or Not

2006-04-30T18:46:00.000-07:00

As Others Panic, Citizens Accept Life With Virus and Do Not Alter Their Diet

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 30, 2006; Page A18

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Here at the heart of the epidemic, where bird flu continues to rip through poultry flocks and more people now succumb to the virus than anyplace else on Earth, the lunchtime crowd at the Ayam Goreng Suharti restaurant can't get enough of the chicken.

The ravenous and the merely peckish cram nearly every one of the two dozen tables. They hunch over their plates, tearing off chunks of the succulent meat with their hands, licking their greasy fingers. While international health experts continue to sound the alarm about the prospect of pandemic and U.S. officials warn ominously that the disease could appear in American birds by fall, the overriding concerns at this Jakarta eatery turn on whether to order the chicken fried or grilled, with chili or spices; to have half a bird or to splurge on a whole one.

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Indonesia: Man dies of bird flu

2006-04-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

Friday, April 28, 2006 Posted: 0709 GMT (1509 HKT)

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Indonesia reported its 25th death from the H5N1 strain of bird flu on Friday and China said an 8-year-old girl had contracted the disease.

Vietnam's agricultural minister, meanwhile, said his country would need an additional US$400 million to help fight the virus and prepare for a potential pandemic.

The 30-year-old Indonesian man who died this week had contact with infected chickens in Tangerang, a city 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the capital Jakarta, said Health Ministry official Hariadi Wibisono.

Local tests indicated he had bird flu, Wibisono said, but the results still need to be confirmed by a World Health Organization-sanctioned laboratory in Hong Kong.

That could take three to seven days.

Indonesia's human toll from H5N1 is currently at 24, according to WHO, the second highest in the world after Vietnam.

The sprawling archipelago is logging cases faster than any other country, leading some international health experts to say it could do more to battle the virus.

The government, saying it lacks the money for mass bird slaughtering in infected areas, is relying mostly on vaccinating birds and carrying out limited culls in places where people have died.

China reported its 18th case of the virus, 12 of which have resulted in death.

The 8-year-old girl from Suining, a city in the southwest province of Sichuan, showed symptoms of fever and pneumonia on April 16 and was being treated at a local hospital, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

Investigations show that poultry deaths were reported at her home before she got sick, the ministry said, without giving any more details on the outbreak.

People who came into close contact with the girl, surnamed Sun, have been put under medical observation and none have shown any abnormal symptoms, the ministry said.

Vietnam has been applauded in recent months for strides it has made in fighting the virus through a mass poultry vaccination campaign that began last year, combined with increased surveillance and awareness.

It has not reported any poultry outbreaks since December and no human bird flu cases since November.

But Hans Troedsson, WHO representative in Vietnam, said the Southeast nation must remain on alert.

"If there would be complacency now, Vietnam would be facing imminent risk," he said. "What's important is that we are not having a false security thinking that the threat is over from avian influenza in Vietnam."

The country's agriculture minister, Cao Duc Phat, said Friday some US$400 million would be needed in the next five years to fight the virus and prepare for a potential pandemic.

Half of the money, he said, should come from international donors.

Bird flu has killed at least 113 people since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in 2003.

The virus remains hard for people to catch, but health experts fear it could eventually mutate into a form that spreads easily from person to person, potentially sparking a pandemic.

Human Bird Flu Cases Top 200 After Egypt Confirms 12 Infections

2006-04-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu cases worldwide topped 200 after a dozen people were confirmed to have been infected with the virus in Egypt, the World Health Organization said.

``Of the 12 cases in Egypt, four patients have died and one remains hospitalized in stable condition,'' the Geneva-based United Nations agency said in an April 21 statement on its Web site. ``Seven patients have fully recovered and been discharged from hospital.''

An 18-year-old girl from the north Egyptian governorate of Minufiyah is the country's latest confirmed fatality, the WHO said. She developed symptoms on April 5 and died nine days later. Egypt's Ministry of Health regards cases as confirmed when positive results are obtained in its national public health laboratory and the Cairo-based U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit 3. Test results on Egypt's initial cases were validated by a WHO collaborating laboratory in the U.K.

Cases in Egypt of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza take to 204 the number of people infected with the lethal virus since late 2003, according to the WHO. Of those, 113 have been fatal. More people are becoming infected after at least 33 countries reported initial outbreaks in animals since February.

The spread of the virus in birds creates more opportunity for human infection and raises the risk that H5N1 will evolve into a pandemic form capable of killing millions of people.

In Egypt, H5N1 outbreaks in poultry have been reported in 20 of the country's 26 governorates, the government said in an April 20 statement on its Web site.

So far this year, 60 H5N1 cases and 37 fatalities have been reported worldwide, compared with 95 cases and 41 fatalities in the whole of 2005. Countries to have reported human cases are Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Turkey, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Egypt.

In almost all human H5N1 cases, infection was caused by close contact with sick or dead birds, such as children playing with them, or adults butchering them or taking off the feathers, the WHO said last month.

The total number of H5N1 fatalities is a fraction of deaths caused each year by seasonal flu, which usually numbers between 250,000 and 500,000 worldwide, according to the agency. Most deaths from seasonal flu in developed countries occur in people over 65.

A pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges and starts spreading as easily as seasonal flu, through coughing and sneezing, according to the WHO.

Humans have no natural immunity to the H5N1 virus, making it likely that people who contract any pandemic flu strain based on H5N1 will become more seriously ill than when infected by seasonal flu, the WHO said. A flu pandemic in 1918 killed about 50 million people worldwide.

WHO tests confirm 24th bird flu death in Indonesia - official

2006-04-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

04.19.2006, 09:09 AM

JAKARTA (AFX) - Indonesia's 24th bird flu death has been confirmed by World Health Organisation tests, a hospital spokesman said.

'The latest results from the WHO were received yesterday concerning a man who died at (Sulianti Saroso hospital) on April 8 or 9,' hospital spokesman and spokesman for the national bird flu team, Ilham Patu, told Agence France-Presse.

He said the results were positive and the victim was aged 24.

Besides the fatalities, Indonesia has confirmed 10 other infection cases where the sufferer has survived.

Bird Flu: Small poultry farmers severely hit

2006-04-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 16, 2006 (Pataudi):

In the aftermath of bird flu, as the poultry industry faces huge losses, it's the small poultry farmers who have been the worst hit.

Over a million farmers across the country have virtually lost their livelihood and have found desperate measures to tide over the crisis as they wait for the government to intervene.

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Bird flu scare in Indore, seven quratined

2006-04-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 (Indore):

Seven people have been quarantined in a government hospital in Indore after they complained of bird flu-like symptoms.

All the patients hail from Onkareshwar near Indore.

Although 40 chickens died in the area, their samples have tested negative.

The Centre is sending a rapid response medical team to Indore to collect blood samples of the patients.

Program For Flu Response Readied

2006-04-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

Program For Flu Response Readied
Multi-Agency Proposal Awaits Bush's Approval

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page A08

President Bush is expected to approve soon a national pandemic influenza response plan that identifies more than 300 specific tasks for federal agencies, including determining which frontline workers should be the first vaccinated and expanding Internet capacity to handle what would probably be a flood of people working from their home computers.

The Treasury Department is poised to sign agreements with other nations to produce currency if U.S. mints cannot operate. The Pentagon, anticipating difficulties acquiring supplies from the Far East, is considering stockpiling millions of latex gloves. And the Department of Veterans Affairs has developed a drive-through medical exam to quickly assess patients who suspect they have been infected.

The document is the first attempt to spell out in some detail how the government would detect and respond to an outbreak, and continue functioning through what could be an 18-month crisis, which in a worst-case scenario could kill 1.9 million Americans. Bush was briefed on a draft of the implementation plan on March 17. He is expected to approve the plan within the week, but it continues to evolve, said several administration officials who have been working on it.

Still reeling from the ineffectual response to Hurricane Katrina, the White House is eager to show it could manage the medical, security and economic fallout of a major outbreak. In response to questions posed to several federal agencies, White House officials offered a briefing on the near-final version of its 240-page plan. When it is issued, officials intend to announce several vaccine manufacturing contracts to jump-start an industry that has declined in the past few decades.

The background briefing and on-the-record interviews with experts in and out of government reveal that some agencies are far along in preparing for a deadly outbreak. Others have yet to resolve basic questions, such as who is designated an essential employee and how the agency would cope if that person were out of commission.

"Most of the federal government right now is as ill-prepared as any part of society," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Osterholm said the administration has made progress but is nowhere near prepared for what he compared to a worldwide "12- to 18-month blizzard."

Many critical decisions remain to be made. Administration scientists are debating how much vaccine would be needed to immunize against a new strain of avian influenza, and they are weighing data that may alter their strategy on who should have priority for antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu and Relenza.

The new analysis, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that instead of giving medicine to first responders and health-care workers, as currently planned, it might be wiser to give the drugs to every person with symptoms and others in the same household, one senior administration official said.

The approach offers "some real hope for communities to put a dent in the amount of illness and death, if we go with that strategy," a White House official said.

Each year, about 36,000 Americans die from seasonal influenza. A worldwide outbreak, or pandemic, occurs when a potent new, highly contagious strain of the virus emerges. It is a far greater threat than annual flu because everyone is susceptible, and it would take as much as six months to develop a vaccine. The 1918 pandemic flu, the worst of the 20th century, is estimated to have killed more than 50 million people worldwide.

Alarm has risen because of the emergence of the most dangerous strain to appear in decades -- the H5N1 avian flu. It has primarily struck birds, but about 200 people worldwide have contracted the disease, and half have died. Experts project that the next pandemic -- depending on severity and countermeasures -- could kill 210,000 to 1.9 million Americans.

To keep the 1.8 million federal workers healthy and productive through a pandemic, the Bush administration would tap into its secure stash of medications, cancel large gatherings, encourage schools to close and shift air traffic controllers to the busier hubs -- probably where flu had not yet struck. Retired federal employees would be summoned back to work, and National Guard troops could be dispatched to cities facing possible "insurrection," said Jeffrey W. Runge, chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration hopes to help contain the first cases overseas by rushing in medical teams and supplies. "If there is a small outbreak in a country, it may behoove us to introduce travel restrictions," Runge said, "to help stamp out that spark."

However, even an effective containment effort would merely postpone the inevitable, said Ellen P. Embrey, deputy assistant secretary for force health preparedness and readiness at the Pentagon. "Unfortunately, we believe the forest fire will burn before we are able to contain it overseas, and it will arrive on our shores in multiple locations," she said.

As Katrina illustrated, a central issue would be "who is ultimately in charge and how the agencies will be coordinated," said former assistant surgeon general Susan Blumenthal. The Department of Health and Human Services would take the lead on medical aspects, but Homeland Security would have overall authority, she noted. "How are those authorities going to come together?"

Essentially, the president would be in charge, the White House official replied. Bush is expected to adopt post-Katrina recommendations that a new interagency task force coordinate the federal response and a high-level Disaster Response Group resolve disputes among agencies or states. Neither entity has been created.

Analysts at the Government Accountability Office found that earlier efforts by the administration to plan for disasters were overly broad or simply sat on a shelf.

"Our biggest concern is whether an agency has a clear idea of what it absolutely has to do, no matter what," said Linda Koontz, director of information management issues at GAO. "Some had three and some had 400 essential functions. We raised questions about whether 400 were really essential."

In several cases, agencies never trained for or rehearsed emergency plans, she said, causing concern that when disaster strikes, "people will be sitting there with a 500-page book in front of them."

The federal government -- as well as private businesses -- should expect as much as 40 percent of its workforce to be out during a pandemic, said Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at HHS. Some will be sick or dead; others could be depressed, or caring for a loved one or staying at home to prevent spread of the virus. "The problem is, you never know which 40 percent will be out," he said.

The Agriculture Department, with 4 million square feet of office space in metropolitan Washington alone, would likely stagger shifts, close cafeterias and cancel face-to-face meetings, said Peter Thomas, the acting assistant secretary for administration.

The department has bought masks, gloves and hand sanitizers, and has hired extra nurses and compiled a list of retired employees who could be temporarily rehired, he said. A 24-hour employee hotline would provide medical advice and work updates. And as it did during Katrina, Agriculture has contingency plans for meeting the payrolls of several federal departments totaling 600,000 people.

Similarly, the Commerce Department has identified its eight priority functions, including the ability to assign emergency communication frequencies, and how those could be run with 60 percent of its normal staff.

Operating the largest health-care organization in the nation, the VA has directed its 153 hospitals to stock up on other medications, equipment, food and water, said chief public health officer Lawrence Deyton. "But it's a few days' worth, not enough to last months," he added.

Anticipating that some nurses may be home caring for family members -- and to reduce the number of patients descending on its hospitals -- the VA intends to put nurses on its toll-free hotline to help veterans decide whether they need professional medical care. At many VA hospitals, nurses and doctors would stand in the parking lots armed with thermometers and laptop computers to do drive-through exams. Modeled after its successful drive-through vaccination program last fall, the parking-lot triage is intended to keep the flow of patients moving rapidly, Deyton said.

Much of the federal government's plan relies on quick distribution of medications and vaccine. The Strategic National Stockpile has 5.1 million courses of Tamiflu on hand. The goal is to secure 21 million doses of Tamiflu and 4 million doses of Relenza by the end of this year, and a total of 51 million by late 2008.

In addition, the administration will pay one-quarter of the cost of antivirals bought by states. The Pentagon, VA, USDA and Transportation Department have their own stockpiles-- and most intend to buy more as it becomes available.

Blumenthal, the former assistant surgeon general, questioned why two years after Congress approved a $5.6 billion BioShield program to develop new drugs and vaccines, so little progress has been made.

Homeland Security's Runge has a different concern: "One of the scariest thoughts is, if this country has successfully developed a vaccine within six months of an outbreak or our supply of antivirals is greater, there may be a rush into the United States for those things."

And even if those fears do not materialize, officials have warned that the federal preparations go only so far. Much is left to the states, communities and even individuals.

"Any community that fails to prepare -- with the expectation that the federal government can come to the rescue -- will be tragically wrong," HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said in a speech April 10. The administration is posting information on the Internet at http://www.pandemicflu.gov/

Experts debate whether eating infected poultry spreads avian flu virus

2006-04-15T16:54:00.000-07:00

By DECLAN BUTLER Nature

Can people catch the H5N1 avian flu virus by eating infected poultry? Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the U.K. Medical Research Council, says the public need not worry.

"There is no evidence of transmission to people by eating cooked eggs or chicken," he said on BBC radio last week, adding that the only food risk he could see was from "drinking swans’ blood."

Blakemore’s sound bite came a day after Britain’s first case of H5N1 in a wild bird was confirmed in a dead swan found floating in a harbour in Cellardyke, Scotland. His advice echoes a slew of recent reassurances by governments worldwide and by the World Health Organization, all conscious of damaging public confidence in the poultry industry.

But many flu scientists are concerned that, although the risks are low, there is not enough evidence to say that the virus cannot be transmitted by eating infected poultry.

"Oral transmission is an open question," says Masato Tashiro, a virologist at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo. "Direct evidence of oral infection is lacking, but so too is proof against."

On March 23, the European Food Safety Authority published a prominent scientific risk assessment. Its advice is that poultry products are safe to eat and have "not been implicated in the transmission of the H5N1 avian influenza virus to humans."

H5N1 is present in the meat and eggs of infected birds, and animals have become infected by eating diseased birds. But the EFSA plays down this route in humans, arguing that "humans who have acquired the infection have been in direct contact with infected live or dead birds."

That overstates the case, says Jody Lanard, a physician and risk-communication consultant based in Princeton, N.J., who recently advised the World Health Organization about pandemic communication. She points out that the report itself acknowledges frequent instances of insufficient epidemiological evidence to identify the source of infection. She adds that the report also says sources of infection such as poor preparation and cooking of food cannot be excluded.

"Such cases could equally well indicate a likely gastrointestinal portal of entry," agrees Menno de Jong, a virologist at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

However, the report dismisses the idea that H5N1 can enter the body through the human gut, concluding that there is "no proof that virus replicates in the human intestine." Although the report mentions the presence of diarrhea in infected humans, together with the detection of viral RNA in intestines and of the virus in rectal swabs, it says these "do not allow one to conclude that the gastrointestinal tract is a portal of entry or a target organ."

De Jong, who has treated many of the cited diarrhea cases, says the report’s authors are "formally right" to say there is no proof that the virus replicates in the intestine. But there is no proof that it doesn’t either, he says.

Russia loses half of farm poultry because of bird flu

2006-04-15T16:52:00.000-07:00

14.04.2006, 20.07

TAMBOV, April 14 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia has lost nearly half of farm poultry because of bird flu, Chief Public Health Official and head of the Federal Consumer Rights and Human Well Being Service Gennady Onishchenko said at a Friday meeting of the Central Federal District Council.

“Bird flu has affected nine constituents of the Russian Federation,” Onishchenko said. “Wild birds will fly to Siberia in late April, and a pan-epidemic may spread onto the Urals. The bird flu forecast for the Central Federal District is favorable.”

“We do not expect the infection [in the Central Federation Region} that does not have much places for nesting,” Onishchenko said. “Yet the spring hunting season has been banned, and specialists would try to prevent the nesting.”

Some 150 million doses of bird flu vaccine for the inoculation of domestic birds are being bought from Vladimir and Stavropol factories. The majority of poultry farms of the Central Federal District are not ready for keeping their birds indoors. “This unpreparedness may fully deprive Russia of poultry farms,” Onishchenko said.

New bird-flu outbreak in southern Russia hits vaccinated fowl

2006-04-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

13/ 04/ 2006

VOLGOGRAD, April 13 (RIA Novosti) - Quarantine regulations have been introduced at a village in southern Russia after mass death of birds already vaccinated against the disease, a local official said Thursday.

The official said 20 birds vaccinated against the lethal H5N1 strain of the disease April 4 had died at a small homestead in a Volgograd region village.

"The birds had tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu," he said, adding that the remaining 25 birds at the homestead have been slaughtered.

In late March, bird flu hit another village in the region, where 85 birds kept in the yard of a house had died.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said this week that around 1.1 million birds had died of the disease in Russia while 0.3 million have been culled in measures to control the spread of the virus since February 3.

The H5N1 strain returned to southern Russia, a stopover for migrating birds, in February, following outbreaks last year

Before today's deaths, officials said a massive vaccination campaign had made it possible to prevent an epidemic, with around 20 million birds vaccinated in 62 Russia's regions since March 10.

No human cases of bird flu have been diagnosed in Russia.

Bird flu: Seven suspected patients hospitalised

2006-04-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

Press Trust of India

Indore, April 13, 2006

Seven persons, including six women, suspected to be affected with bird-flu were admitted in the isolation ward of the TB Hospital, Chief Medical Officer KK Vijayvargiya said on Wednesday.

"Their blood samples have been collected and were sent to Delhi for examination," he said.

"The suspected persons were referred from Mortakka in Khandwa district with suspected bird flu fever," he said, adding that they were examined by doctors and initial reports did not reveal anything suspicious.

Only after getting the report from the Delhi laboratory it can be confirmed whether they are affected with the bird flu or not, he said.

The suspected persons consumed a chicken dish few days back following which it was suspected that they are affected with the disease, he said.

They complained of vomiting, fever and pain in hands and legs, he added.

Nine poultry farmers commit suicide in flu-hit India

2006-04-12T15:02:00.000-07:00

Reuters
April 12, 2006

MUMBAI - Nine poultry farmers in India have killed themselves and more are facing a grim future after bird flu slashed demand for chicken meat, an industry group said on Wednesday.

India has culled hundreds of thousands of birds to contain several outbreaks of the H5N1 avian flu virus in poultry since February, but the disease has continued to resurface, mostly in western Maharashtra state.

The scare has decimated the country's $7.8 billion poultry industry, which says losses in the past two months have reached $2.2 billion.

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Revealed: the secret No 10 plan to tackle bird flu food shortages

2006-04-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

By Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor
(Filed: 09/04/2006)

Emergency plans to tackle widespread food shortages in the event of a bird flu pandemic are being drawn up by ministers, according to secret Cabinet documents.

Off-duty firemen and retired lorry drivers would be pressed into service to ensure that essential food and drink supplies were delivered. Laws that restrict the daily hours of drivers and other vital workers would be suspended.

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'100 bird flul outbreaks' in Burma

2006-04-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

BBC
Monday, 10 April 2006

Bird flu has spread in Burma with more than 100 outbreaks across the country, a UN official has said.

He Changchui of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told a press conference the situation was "more serious than we imagined".

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Health experts worried about bird flu impact on Gaza diet

2006-04-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

AFP
Wed Apr 5, 10:19 AM ET

JERUSALEM - An outbreak of the highly contagious H5N1 strain of bird flu in the Gaza Strip is "partially under control", health experts said, while voicing concern for its impact on the local diet.

"The situation is partially under control and that control should improve," local World Health Organisation chief Ambroglio Manenti told journalists.

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Bird flu kills 12-year old in Cambodia

2006-04-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

Reuters
Wed Apr 5, 2006 05:42 AM ET

PHNOM PENH - Bird flu has killed a 12-year-old boy in Cambodia, the impoverished Southeast Asian nation's sixth victim, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

The boy, from the southeastern province of Prey Veng, abutting Vietnam, died on Tuesday night, said Michael O'Leary, the WHO representative in Phnom Penh.

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Bird flu goes for the throat

2006-04-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

Helen Carter
ABC Science Online

Humans infected with bird flu appear to have more of the virus in their throat and nose than people with standard human influenza strains, a conference is due to hear today.

The findings may help explain why avian influenza A (H5N1) has such a high death rate in humans, more than 50% mortality.

Dr Menno de Jong, head of the virology department at the University of Oxford's clinical research unit at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, studied 17 patients with bird flu.

He found the virus is often associated with disseminated infection in blood and faeces, and with higher levels of viral replication in the nasopharynx compared with contemporary Vietnamese influenza cases.

High viral levels, disseminated infection and an intense inflammatory response also seem associated with poor outcomes, he is due to tell the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases annual scientific meeting in Wellington, New Zealand today.

"Our main findings are that influenza H5N1 seems to be characterised by high virus levels in the respiratory tract, evidence suggesting disseminated infection [virus detection in blood and rectum] and [likely as a result of this] an intense inflammatory response," de Jong says.

High levels of viral replication are likely to play a role in determining a patient's outcome by direct effects of the virus or by the inflammatory response to the virus, he says.

"The reason for the high mortality probably is not high replication rates per se, but high replication rates of an extremely virulent virus," he says.

Antiviral drugs should be started early to prevent as much inflammatory response as possible, he says.

Two of the people in his study developed resistance to the antiviral drug oseltamivir and died, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine last December.

Resistance implies suboptimal suppression of replication and strategies to minimise it include ensuring adequate levels of the drug in the body by increasing the dose or giving it intravenously, or combining it with other antiviral drugs, he says.

De Jong says avian-type cell receptors being mostly in the lower respiratory tract could explain why bird flu does not spread among humans, as reported in the journal Nature recently.

This may explain why viral load seems higher in the throat than nose, and why all infected developed pneumonia, he says.

'If H5N1 Mutates, We Should Prepare Mass Burials'

2006-04-03T20:51:00.000-07:00

By Anadolu News Agency (aa), LONDON
Published: Sunday, April 02, 2006
zaman.com

A confidential British report noted that if the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus mutates into a form transmissible to humans, 320,000 people could die in Britain and mass graves might have to be buried.

The British Sunday Times newspaper claimed that they reached the British Interior Minister’s March 22, 2006 dated classified report, titled “To deal with mass deaths in case of a bird flu epidemic.”

According to the news, the report recalls the painful memories of the great epidemic of 1665 and warns that an epidemic could cause a delay of up to 17 weeks for burial or cremation.

The report claims that in case of a 15-week epidemic, Britain and Wales could face 48,000 deaths. The Interior Ministry Spokesman was quoted as saying, “The government takes serious the threat caused by the possibility of a mutation in the bird flu virus.”

Meeting Doctor Doom

2006-04-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

Forrest M. Mims III
Citizen Scientist

There is always something special about science meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal (Brian Iken and Dr. Deanna McCullough, "Bald Cypress of the Texas Hill Country: Taxonomically Unique?" 109th Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science Program and Abstracts, Poster P59, p. 84, 2006).

But there was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

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400 Chinese students hospitalized with unknown flu

2006-04-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

AFP
Sun Apr 2, 8:37 AM ET

BEIJING - Over 400 students at a university in central China's Henan province were hospitalized with high fevers linked to an unknown flu virus, state press and a school official have said.

The outbreak began on March 26 when 22 students were hospitalized with high fevers, Xinhua news agency said.

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Indonesia Health Official Reports Human Bird Flu Case

2006-04-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

By VOA News
01 April 2006

Indonesian health officials say local tests have confirmed a man has tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus.

Authorities say the man, in his 20s, is in stable condition at a hospital in West Sumatra province.

Friday, the World Health Organization confirmed that a one-year-old girl had become the 23rd person in Indonesia to die of the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Also Friday, representatives from the Pan American Health Organization, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture and the Organization of American States met in Washington to discuss ways to head off a possible bird flu epidemic.

About 25 centers throughout the region already monitor outbreaks of influenza. With the world sending much of its financial and technical aid to other geographic areas, the officials say it is important for the region to pool its resources.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.

Egypt reports two more human bird flu infections

2006-04-02T16:34:00.000-07:00

02 Apr 2006 11:10:06 GMT
Source: Reuters

CAIRO, April 2 (Reuters) - Two more Egyptians have been infected with the bird flu virus, Egyptian Health Minister Hatem el-Gabali said on Sunday, taking to eight the number of reported human cases in the country.

The two were sisters, one aged 18 months and the other six years, from Kafr el-Sheikh province north of Cairo. The pair, who had handled dead birds, were in a stable condition. Blood tests on their immediate family were negative for the virus.

An Egyptian labourer working in Jordan was diagnosed with the disease on Friday.

A World Health Organisation spokesman said only five cases had been confirmed by the organisation. Of the five, two have died, two have recovered and one is still in hospital. Bird flu has killed at least 105 people worldwide.

The disease was first detected in Egypt in February and has since devastated its poultry industry. Efforts to combat the disease have been hampered by poor Egyptians breeding poultry in backyards or in homes to supplement their income, despite a ban.

The avian flu virus has so far not been transmitted from human to human, but can be caught from infected birds.

Although difficult for humans to catch, scientists fear bird flu could mutate into a form that can pass easily between humans, causing a pandemic.

Bird flu could reach Alaska in weeks

2006-03-31T08:11:00.000-08:00

'Avian-flu index' is up 105% since last August

By Ciara Linnane, MarketWatch
Last Update: 2:43 PM ET Mar 29, 2006

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. government officials monitoring the spread of avian influenza are expecting the first case to reach Alaska in about three weeks and to hit the West Coast by autumn, Prudential Equity Group said Wednesday.

The H5 pathogen has been confirmed in 51 or more countries, according to the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, causing the culling of millions of birds across Asia, Europe and, more recently, the Middle East.

The first cases in the U.S. won't necessarily make humans ill -- only the bird version of the disease is expected here, at least initially, said Kim Monk, a Prudential senior health-care-policy analyst.

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23rd human bird flu death confirmed in Indonesia

2006-03-31T08:09:00.000-08:00

Posted: 31-Mar-2006 22:42 hrs

Indonesia's 23rd bird flu fatality has been confirmed by tests carried out by the World Health Organisation (WHO), while local tests showed another patient is infected.
.
"We have just received the results and they are positive," the health ministry's I Nyoman Kandun told AFP, referring to tests of samples from the 23rd victim, a one-year-girl from the capital Jakarta.
.
The girl died just over a week ago at Indonesia's main hospital for bird flu patients, Sulianti Saroso, after coming into contact with sick chickens near her house.
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"We also received information today that an adult patient in West Sumatra has tested positive," Kandun said Friday, adding that the patient was a 23-year-old man.

Bird Flu Fatalities Climb, Mark Deadliest Quarter Yet (Update3)

2006-03-31T08:07:00.000-08:00

March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu deaths in Egypt may bring the year's toll to 31 people and mark the quarter as the deadliest yet as the virus spreads through Europe and Africa.

The World Health Organization is scheduled to report within days the results of tests on two women who died this month, the UN agency said on its Web site. Three other people in Egypt also tested positive for the H5N1 avian flu strain, the WHO said.

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China Confirms Woman's Bird Flu Death

2006-03-25T13:28:00.000-08:00

By JOE McDONALD
The Associated Press
Saturday, March 25, 2006; 4:20 AM

BEIJING -- A woman who died in Shanghai tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, China announced Saturday. Indonesia awaited confirmation of tests showing that a dead 1-year-old girl in Jakarta had the virus.

In Hong Kong, the government said a dead peregrine falcon found in a housing complex tested positive for the H5N1 strain.

The woman who died in Shanghai was the Chinese mainland's 11th human death from bird flu and the first in Shanghai, the country's biggest city, according to the World Health Organization.

The migrant worker, identified only by the common surname Li, died Tuesday after being hospitalized with fever and cold symptoms.

Blood tests by China's national Center for Disease Control confirmed Li had bird flu, the Health Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Xinhua News Agency. It said the tests were conducted in line with WHO standards and results were reported to the agency.

Authorities haven't said how the woman might have contracted the virus. No bird flu outbreaks in poultry have been reported in Shanghai since 2004.

People who had close contact with Li were placed under observation but none has shown disease symptoms, Xinhua said.

Worldwide, the virus has killed more than 100 people in eight countries, mostly in Asia, according to WHO.

Tests on the Indonesian girl, who died Thursday, showed she had the H5N1 strain, said Hariadi Wibisono, a Health Ministry director. He said she fell ill after coming into contact with dead poultry.

A swab and blood sample have been sent to a WHO-sanctioned laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation, Wibisono said.

The girl would be Indonesia's 23rd human death from bird flu, he said.

The falcon in Hong Kong was found Tuesday near the border with mainland China, and laboratory tests confirmed it had the H5N1 strain, according to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.

Hong Kong hasn't reported a human case of bird flu since 2003.

More than 6,000 dead birds have been tested for bird flu in Hong Kong since late October, according to the government. Of those, two chickens and 14 wild birds were confirmed to have the H5N1 virus.

China has reported 16 human cases and dozens of outbreaks in chickens, ducks and other poultry in areas throughout the country. The government has destroyed millions of farm birds to contain outbreaks.

Most of China's human infections have been traced to contact with sick or dead birds. Experts say the virus might be spread by millions of migratory birds that cross China.

Bird flu: WHO calls meet with Asian drug cos

2006-03-25T13:27:00.000-08:00

Saturday, 25 March , 2006, 10:27

Mumbai: As South-East Asian countries report cases of bird-flu jumping species and infecting humans, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for a meeting on the "pandemic preparedness" in this region.

The meeting scheduled to be held in Delhi later this month will bring together health representatives from India, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh, along with drug companies from these countries to discuss their preparedness in the event of a pandemic, a WHO official told Business Line.

Stock piling Oseltamivir, the drug recommended for the treatment of bird-flu, is just one component of the preparedness plan.

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Indonesian baby confirmed dead due to bird flu

2006-03-25T13:26:00.000-08:00

www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-25 15:55:22

JAKARTA, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia recorded another bird flu death here on Saturday, after local test confirmed a one-year old baby girl who died on Thursday in Jakarta was positive of having avian influenza virus, director at the health ministry said.

"The baby is positive, according to our local test," Director Hariadi Wibisono told Xinhua.

It was not clear whether the baby or her parent had contacted with fowls.

The death still awaited test results from the World Health Organization, which had so far confirmed 22 death out of 30 Indonesians contracted by avian influenza virus.

Bird flu has now killed more than 90 people in East Asia and the Middle East since late 2003 and scientists feared the virus could mutate and spread easily from human to human, which could trigger a pandemic.

Researchers Shed More Light on Bird Flu

2006-03-23T19:47:00.000-08:00

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 23, 2006; Page A13

Two research teams have independently discovered explanations for the chief features of the H5N1 bird flu virus -- its difficulty infecting humans, and the deadly effects when it does.

Unlike influenza viruses that are passed easily between people, H5N1 has a hard time attaching to cells in the nose, throat and upper airways. But it readily attaches to cells deep in the lungs.

This suggests that people need close and heavy exposure to the H5N1 virus for it to get into the lungs. But once it takes hold, it causes extensive damage to the machinery of respiration -- the cells and air spaces where oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide.

That scenario mimics the clinical experience of many of the 184 human cases of bird flu that have been officially recorded since late 2003. More than half have been fatal.

"This is information that we need to know -- fundamental and exciting," said Robert G. Webster, a leading flu virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. He was not a member of either of the research groups, one of which published its results in yesterday's issue of the journal Nature, and the other online in Science.

Influenza infection occurs through a series of steps, with a key early one involving hemagglutinin, a protein that coats the virus's outer envelope. That protein attaches to sugar molecules that lie on the surface of many cells.

Virologists have known for years that human flu viruses attach through a sugar "linkage" designated alpha 2,6. The vast family of avian flu viruses favors a linkage with a different shape, designated alpha 2,3.

A research team led by Kyoko Shinya at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Tokyo looked at what cells in the human respiratory tract contain which linkage. They found that alpha 2,6 -- the receptor for human flu -- predominated in the nose and down the airways to the microscopic passageways that lead to the air sacs, or alveoli. At that point, cells with the alpha 2,3 linkage -- the receptor for bird viruses -- become common. Human viruses attached to the upper airways, while avian viruses attached to cells deep in the lungs.

The Japanese researchers, who published their findings in Nature, also tested an H5N1 virus taken from a person who died of bird flu in Hong Kong in 2003. That microbe's hemagglutinin recognized both the human and bird linkages, and it attached to cells from nose to lung. Most H5N1 samples isolated from people do not generally follow that pattern. The ability to bind to alpha 2,6 human receptors is one of several features that would have to become dominant for the H5N1 virus to become easily transmitted from human to human.

In the other paper, Thijs Kuiken and colleagues at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands exposed H5N1 to blocks of tissue taken from all along the respiratory tree. They found the bird virus attached predominantly to cells at the entrance to the air sacs and in them, as well as to immune-system cells called alveolar macrophages that patrol the area.

This same pattern was seen in cats and ferrets. (Ferrets have traditionally been considered the species whose flu infections most closely mimic those of humans.) In mice, however, the pattern was reversed. H5N1 attached best to cells in the windpipe, not the lung -- suggesting mice are not the best animal model for research on this strain.

In many of the fatal H5N1 infections, people's lungs were filled with fluid, the result of an out-of-control inflammatory reaction. Kuiken speculated that bird flu's affinity for macrophages -- which can release inflammatory chemicals -- may be part of the reason.

Bird flu discovered in Gaza Strip

2006-03-23T19:09:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 16:09 GMT

Initial tests on dead chickens suggest the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has spread to the Gaza Strip, Israeli and Palestinian officials have said.

The tests were conducted after some 200 chickens died in the southern town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt.

Israel has been culling hundreds of thousands of birds after an H5N1 outbreak was confirmed on farms next to the Gaza Strip last week.

Egypt on Tuesday reported its fourth suspected case of bird flu in humans.

Earlier this month, Egyptian state TV said a woman had died from the H5N1 virus.

The world's human death toll has reached 103 since late 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The latest five deaths were confirmed by the WHO in Azerbaijan.

The virus cannot pass easily from one person to another but there are fears it could mutate, triggering a pandemic.

US scientists have confirmed the H5N1 virus has evolved into two genetically distinct strains, potentially increasing the risk to humans.

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Blame 'Big Chicken

2006-03-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

By Wendy Orent
Sunday, March 19, 2006

Chicken never has been cheaper. A whole one can be bought for little more than the price of a cup of coffee from Starbucks. But the industrial farming methods that make ever-cheaper chicken possible also may have created the lethal strain of bird flu virus, H5N1, that threatens to set off a global pandemic.

According to University of Ottawa flu virologist Earl Brown, lethal bird flu is entirely man-made, first evolving in commercially produced poultry in Italy in 1878. The highly pathogenic H5N1 is descended from a strain that first appeared in Scotland in 1959.

People have been living with backyard flocks of poultry since the dawn of civilization. But it wasn't until poultry production became modernized and birds were raised in much larger numbers and concentrations that a virulent bird flu evolved. Somehow, the virus that arose in Scotland found its way to China, where, as H5N1, it has been raging for more than a decade.

Industrial poultry-raising moved from the West to Asia in the last few decades and has begun to supplant backyard flocks there.

Poultry may represent a family's greatest wealth. The birds often are not eaten until they die of old age or illness. The cost of the virus to people who have raised birds for months or years is incalculable and the compensation risible: In Thailand, farmers have been offered one-third of their birds' value since the outbreak of bird flu.

Some researchers still blame migratory birds for the relentless spread of the bird flu virus. But Martin Williams, a conservationist and bird expert in Hong Kong, contends that wild birds are more often victims than carriers.

Researchers concede that the global poultry trade, much of which is illicit, plays a far larger role in spreading the virus.

The Nigerian government traced its outbreak to the illegal importation of day-old chicks. Illegal trading in fighting cocks brought the virus from Thailand to Malaysia in fall 2005. And it is probable that H5N1 first spread from Qinghai to Russia and Kazakhstan last summer through the sale of contaminated poultry.

Continues..

Second strain of bird flu found, say scientists

2006-03-21T14:04:00.000-08:00

By Jim Loney in Atlanta, Georgia
March 22, 2006

THE H5N1 bird flu in humans has evolved into two separate strains, a development that will complicate the search for a vaccine and the prevention of a pandemic, US researchers say.

The genetic diversification of the pool of H5N1 avian influenza viruses with the potential to cause a human influenza pandemic heightens the need for careful surveillance, researchers said on Monday at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta.

"Back in 2003 we only had one genetically distinct population of H5N1 with the potential to cause a human pandemic. Now we have two," said Rebecca Garten of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, who helped conduct the study.

One of the strains, or clades, made people sick in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in 2003 and 2004 and the second, a cousin of the first, caused the disease in people in Indonesia in 2005. Two clades may share an ancestor but are genetically distinct - as are different strains of the AIDS virus, the team from Atlanta found.

"This does complicate vaccine development. But we are moving very swiftly to develop vaccines against this new group of viruses," said Nancy Cox, chief of the centres' influenza branch.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has spread across Europe, Africa and Asia, and infected about 180 people, mainly in South-East Asia, killing nearly 100, since it re-emerged in 2003.

People can become infected if they come into close contact with infected birds. Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that could pass easily between humans, triggering a pandemic in which millions could die.

All influenza viruses mutate easily and H5N1 appears to be no exception. But Dr Cox said the evolution of a second clade did not move the virus closer to human-to-human transmission.

The US Health and Human Services Department has already recognised the two strains and approved the development of a second H5N1 vaccine based on the second clade.

US Government officials said on Monday that it was "increasingly likely" that bird flu could be detected in the US this year, but added it might not mean the start of a human pandemic.

continues...

Blame 'Big Chiken' for Bird flu

2006-03-20T12:02:00.000-08:00

By Wendy Orent
March 19, 2006

Chicken never has been cheaper. A whole one can be bought for little more than the price of a cup of coffee from Starbucks. But the industrial farming methods that make ever-cheaper chicken possible also may have created the lethal strain of bird flu virus, H5N1, that threatens to set off a global pandemic.

According to University of Ottawa flu virologist Earl Brown, lethal bird flu is entirely man-made, first evolving in commercially produced poultry in Italy in 1878. The highly pathogenic H5N1 is descended from a strain that first appeared in Scotland in 1959.

contines...

Second Human Bird Flu Case Found in Egypt

2006-03-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

By OMAR SINAN
Associated Press Writer
Mar 20 12:57 AM US/Eastern

CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt reported its second human case of avian flu Sunday, and Israel continued its slaughter of hundreds of thousands of birds while waiting to learn if the disease had spread to poultry there.

A 30-year-old Egyptian who worked on a chicken farm in the province of Qalyoubiya was the second person infected by the virus in Egypt, the Health Ministry said Sunday.

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Avian flu confirmed in two more locations in south

2006-03-20T11:59:00.000-08:00

By Amiram Cohen, Assaf Uni and Michal Greenberg
Haaretz
13:16 20/03/2006

The Agriculture Ministry confirmed Monday afternoon that avian flu has been detected in two more locations in Israel, bringing the number of sites at which the disease has been found to six.

Suspicions that the virus had reached Kibbutz Nir Oz and Moshav Amei Oz, both in southern Israel, were raised when dead turkeys were found at both locations, and the presence of the virus was confirmed Monday.

LINK

Scientists Say Bird Flu Will Likely Mutate and Jump from Birds to Humans

2006-03-18T14:04:00.000-08:00

March 17, 2006
By Cathryn Curtis

As the threat of bird flu spreads around the world, the big question on the minds of scientists around the world is if — and when — the virus might mutate to allow it to be transmitted from birds to humans. This is what some scientists in the U.S. are predicting:

Bird flu has now been confirmed in more than 40 countries around the world, and health officials are scrambling to prevent the virus from spreading.

Nearly 200 people have been diagnosed with bird flu and more than half have died from it so far. They caught the virus from exposure to chickens and ducks and birds. The bird flu virus can't spread among humans...yet.

Dr. Robert Webster collects and studies samples of the virus in his Memphis, Tennessee lab. He says chances are good that the virus will mutate and jump from birds to humans. "[There are] about even odds at this time for the virus to learn how to transmit human to human."

If that happened, a deadly pandemic could quickly spread around the world.

Dr. Webster says we need to be prepared. "We can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die. I think we have to face that possibility. I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role."

Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger, of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, says there is a frightening historic precedent from 1918. "The risk of the current bird flu is that this virus might be actually going down the same path as the 1918 virus."

Dr. Taubenberger led a team of researchers who decoded that virus. They determined it mutated from a bird flu, but they're not sure where or when that happened. He says today's bird flu virus, called H5N1, shows some similarities to the 1918 virus. He adds, "The H5 viruses, especially some of the more recent ones, share some of those mutations, suggesting that they might be acquiring some changes that would make them more easily adapted to humans. So that's a very worrisome situation for us."

No one knows how many mutations it would take for the virus to jump to humans, when it would happen, or the biggest question of all -- if it will happen.

Dr. Anne Moscona

Nonetheless, Dr. Anne Moscona spends her days searching for new types of anti-virals that would prevent and slow the spread of a human-transmitted bird flu and says there is a chance that the virus may not be able to jump to humans.

"It may not do it. There may just be too many changes. The virus may not be able to be a human virus,” but adds, “I don't think that once we have human to human transmission, it's going to be possible to contain it."

So the scientists work around the clock, hoping the virus doesn't mutate, but preparing for the worst.

- VOA News
LINK

Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5 confirmed in Sweden

2006-03-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

March 18, 2006

Sweden on Friday reported its second case of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu virus in a mallard(duck).

It was strongly suspected (but not yet confirmed) to be the deadly H5N1 strain, said a press release of the European Commission,the executive arm of the European Union (EU).

The Swedish authorities have informed the Commission that they are applying the precautionary measures, including establishment of a high risk area (a 3 kilometers protection zone) and a surrounding surveillance zone of 10 kilometers.

The duck was found dead on a game farm near the town of Oskarshamn, on the eastern coast of Sweden.

Samples will be sent to the EU Reference Laboratory in Weybridge of Britain to confirm if this is the Asian strain of the H5N1 virus.

The affected farm is located within the surveillance zone which had already been established in response to a confirmed case of avian influenza in wild birds on February 28.

This is the second suspected or confirmed outbreak of avian influenza H5N1 on a commercial farm in the EU, with the first being the outbreak on a turkey farm in the Department of Ain in France late February.

Soldiers Hospitalized in Kutaisi Georgia With H5N1 Symptoms

2006-03-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

Recombinomics Commentary
March 16, 2006

Three soldiers were taken to Davit Aghmashenebeli Church Hospital of Kutaisi, to the department of intensive therapy on March 17.

They are the soldiers of the subdivision under the Defence Ministry, dislocated in Kutaisi, Imereti region, western Georgia. The diagnosis of Rodani Chachanidze, Giorgi Gamezardashvili and Nikoloz Narchemashvili is the acute respiratory infection with pneumonia. They were brought to the stationary hospital with the nasal bleeding.

InterpressNews was informed that another 19 soldiers are ill with the similar symptoms but they have no acute forms of the disease like the their abovementioned colleagues.

The above comments on three soldiers with H5N1 bird flu symptoms in Georgia is cause for concern. Kutaisi is near Tbilisi, where two school children died. It is also within 200 miles of Azerbaijan, as well as eastern Turkey, where confirmed H5N1 patients have also died.

Acute respiratory symptoms with pneumonia and nose bleeding are H5N1 bird flu symptoms. Lab results and an update on the condition of the soldiers with mild and severe symptoms would be useful.

Egypt confirms first bird flu human death

2006-03-18T13:29:00.000-08:00

Woman with disease symptoms dies in province north of Cairo, after raising poultry at her home

News Agencies Egypt confirmed its first human case of bird flu on Saturday, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said.

A report carried by the state MENA news agency said a woman with symptoms of the disease had died in Al-Qaloubiyah province, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Cairo.

The woman was raising poultry at her home and some of her birds also died, Health Minister Hatem El-Gabali said, according to the official news agency, MENA.

Police said that Amal Mohammed Ismail, 35, was admitted to hospital in the governorate's capital Qalyoub, about two weeks ago, and was subsequently transferred to the Cairo Fevers' Hospital where she died Friday night.

Ismail's home has been sealed off by security, police said.

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WHO says bird flu database should be made public

2006-03-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

Geneva, March 18. (AP): The UN health agency says it would like to make public a confidential database it maintains on bird flu research, but that it is up to countries and scientists to agree on sharing their information.

The password-protected database, details of which were first reported on earlier this month in articles by the journal Science and The Wall Street Journal, was created in 2003 at the request of southeast Asian countries first hit by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, said Dick Thompson, spokesman for infectious diseases at the World Health Organisation.

WHO has been urging countries and researchers to allow genetic sequences of the virus stored in the database to be made available publicly, but countries and scientists have so far resisted, Thompson said.

"It's been several months since we've been saying that access to this information should not be restricted," Thompson told The Associated Press. "But these are not our viruses and this isn't our information."

Thompson declined to name, which countries were most opposed or elaborate on why they were concerned about the information becoming freely accessible.

The H5N1 virus remains primarily a bird disease, but it has infected at least 177 people and killed 98 in the last three years.

Russia says bird flu may hit US in autumn, mutate

2006-03-17T08:23:00.000-08:00

Thu Mar 16, 2006 09:50 AM ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The deadly bird flu virus, which has hit Asia, Europe and Africa, may spread to the United States late this year and risks mutating dangerously there, Russia's top animal and plant health inspector said on Thursday.

"We think that H5N1 (strain of bird flu virus) will reach the United States in autumn," Sergei Dankvert told Reuters.

"This is very realistic. We may be almost certain this will happen after this strain is found in Great Britain, before autumn, as migrating birds will carry it to the United States from there."

He said there was also an opportunity of the virus spreading by fowl migrating from Siberia's Tyumen region to Alaska and mixing there with birds flying to Canada and to other parts of the United States.

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India culls birds, hunts for flu in humans

2006-03-16T11:01:00.000-08:00

Reuters

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Veterinary workers began throttling more than 70,000 birds in western India on Thursday, stepping up efforts to contain a second outbreak of avian influenza in poultry.

"There is no time for niceties. The birds have to be killed as fast as possible," said Bijay Kumar, animal husbandry commissioner of the state of Maharashtra, where bird flu resurfaced this week in backyard poultry.

Veterinary and civic workers wearing protective gear moved door-to-door collecting chickens and eggs after paying owners 40 rupees (0.5 pounds) for every bird as compensation. Eggs went free.

The birds had their necks twisted and were then stuffed in black plastic bags and buried in shallow pits. Disinfectants and lime powder were then sprinkled over the graves.

"We hope the culling will be over by tomorrow," Kumar said.

Officials said they were checking if the latest outbreak -- which occurred in backyard poultry in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra -- was the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed about 100 people, most of them in Asia.

Health authorities said they were not taking any chances and had sent dozens of medical teams looking for people with flu-like symptoms to every household of the affected area.

Hundreds of people in a nearby area have complained of fever. Doctors say they are most likely suffering from dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease -- but they have sent blood samples for bird flu tests anyway.

Hospitals in Malegaon, 140 km from the latest outbreak, have treated nearly 2,000 people in 15 days.

Authorities said they had identified four villages spread over 1,100 square km in the Jalgaon area as affected and were killing all birds -- an estimated 70,000 -- within that area.

Jalgaon is 200 km from Navapur, where India reported its first case of the H5N1 strain last month. Authorities said last week they had contained the virus there after culling hundreds of thousands of chickens. Continued ...

30,000 bird-flu deaths in south Russia in last 24 hours - ministry

2006-03-16T10:59:00.000-08:00

10:25 16/ 03/ 2006

ROSTOV-ON-DON, March 16 (RIA Novosti, Sergei Rudkovsky) - More than 30,000 birds have died of bird flu in southern Russia over the last 24 hours, a local emergencies ministry official said Thursday.

"In Krasnodar Territory, 21,912 chickens have died over the last 24 hours, and the total number of dead birds has reached 350,288," the official said.

A further 10,818 birds have died over the last 242 hours in the North Caucasus republic of Daghestan, the official said, bringing the total including culled birds to 760,000.

A third wave of bird flu struck Russia starting February 3. The country's southern regions, where all cases in the country have so far been registered, are particularly vulnerable as a stopover for migrating birds. A vaccination program is currently underway in many of the country's regions.

No human deaths from bird flu have so far been registered in Russia.

Banks should prepare for avian flu

2006-03-16T10:58:00.000-08:00

By Lisa Sanders, MarketWatch
Last Update: 3:29 PM ET Mar 15, 2006

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Federal officials on Wednesday urged banks and thrifts to be prepared in the event of a pandemic flu outbreak, because the critical functions they serve will need to continue even if large numbers of workers are absent from their jobs.

The advisory from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision was intended to raise awareness of what needs to be done ahead of an avian-flu epidemic in the United States.

The illness already has infected, and in many cases, killed people in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. It is not known whether it would result in a pandemic.
Still, "the widespread nature of this virus in birds and the possibility that it may mutate over time raise concerns that it will become transmissible among humans, with potentially devastating consequences," the advisory said.

On Monday, the International Monetary Fund advised central banks to have an adequate supply of cash notes and the ability to deliver them to financial institutions promptly so that banks can respond to surges in liquidity demands.

"To calm markets, financial regulators may need to consider a degree of prudential forbearance," the IMF said. "For instance, liquidity requirements, capital adequacy rules and provisioning requirements could be temporarily eased, and regulatory requirements could be adjusted for a 'work at home' environment."
The advisory Wednesday also recommended that the private sector allow workers to do their jobs at home when possible; have a contingency plan to deliver goods and services; establish an infection-control policy; and create a support system by partnering with peers.

"A pandemic event is a potential threat to any financial institution regardless of size and location," according to the interagency statement.

Flu fears prompts calls for masks

2006-03-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

By Julie Robotham, Medical Editor
The Sydney Morning Herald
March 15, 2006

PEOPLE who suspect they may have flu are being urged to wear surgical-type masks this winter, as NSW health officials try to build the public's familiarity with infection control measures that may be needed in the event of a bird flu pandemic.

The Health Department's director of communicable disease, Dr Jeremy McAnulty, said those who went to a GP or emergency department because they thought they might have flu should consider wearing a mask.

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Denmark finds first case of H5 bird flu

2006-03-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark has found its first case of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu virus in a wild fowl, officials said on Wednesday.

The Ministry for Family and Consumer Affairs, which is in charge of food safety, said it would give further details at a news conference at 1100 GMT.

"At the news conference the authorities will inform about the measures taken as a result of the bird flu," it said in a statement.

It was still unclear if the case was the deadly H5N1 strain. So far H5N1 has never been found in Denmark.

Denmark, a major poultry producer with an output worth 3 billion crowns ($483.5 million) a year, has been on guard against bird flu since disease was found on the German Baltic island of Ruegen, near Denmark's southern coast in mid-February.

Denmark has since examined more than 100 dead wild birds for avian flu. Neighboring Sweden reported its first bird flu case on February 28.

"We have been expecting this and are prepared," Jan Pedersen, General Manger of the Danish Poultrymeat Association, told Reuters. "We have further tightened our rules to make sure that the virus is kept out of our poultry sheds."

The H5N1 virus usually kills poultry within 48 hours and can infect people who come into close contract with sick birds.

Sweden Confirms First Case of Bird Flu

2006-03-15T13:32:00.000-08:00

5 Mar 2006 11:09:43 GMT
Source: Reuters

STOCKHOLM, March 15 (Reuters) - Swedish authorities said on Wednesday that tests had confirmed that two wild ducks found on its east coast carried the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Preliminary tests late last month showed that two wild ducks found near the Baltic port city of Oskarshamn carried the aggressive H5 virus, but more tests were needed to ascertain that they were cases of the deadly H5N1 strain.

"The laboratory in Weybridge has now confirmed that it is an H5N1 virus, just as we thought," the National Veterinary Institute said in a statement.

Since the first two cases were found, around a dozen wild birds found along Sweden's southeast coast and on the Baltic island of Gotland have been identified as carrying the H5 virus.

No cases have been reported in domestic fowl.

Dog has died of bird flu in Aserbaijan

2006-03-15T13:31:00.000-08:00

Officials say Azeri dog dies of bird flu

Wed Mar 15, 2006 9:02 AM ET7

BAKU (Reuters) - A dog has died of bird flu in Azerbaijan, a country where the virus is believed to have caused the death of three young women, officials said on Wednesday.

"A dead stray dog has been found, and after analysis type A bird flu was discovered. The medical investigation is continuing," said a statement from the state commission tasked with fighting the spread of bird flu. It said the dog died on March 9 in the capital Baku.

Renowned Bird Flu Expert Warns: Be Prepared

2006-03-14T17:29:00.000-08:00

There Are "About Even Odds" That the Virus Could Mutate to an Easily Transmitted Form, He Tells 'World News Tonight'

By JIM AVILA and MEREDITH RAMSEY

March 14, 2006 — Robert G. Webster is one of the few bird flu experts confident enough to answer the key question: Will the avian flu switch from posing a terrible hazard to birds to becoming a real threat to humans?

There are "about even odds at this time for the virus to learn how to transmit human to human," he told ABC's "World News Tonight." Webster, the Rosemary Thomas Chair at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., is credited with being the first scientist to find the link between human flu and bird flu.

Webster and his team of scientists are working to find a way to beat the virus if it morphs. He has even been dubbed the Flu Hunter.

Right now, H5N1, a type of avian influenza virus, has confined itself to birds. It can be transmitted from bird to human but only by direct contact with the droppings and excretions of infected birds.

But viruses mutate, and the big fear among the world's scientists is that the bird flu virus will join the human flu virus, change its genetic code and emerge as a new and deadly flu that can spread through the air from human to human.

If the virus does mutate, it does not necessarily mean it will be as deadly to people as it is to birds. But experts such as Webster say they must prepare for the worst.

"I personally believe it will happen and make personal preparations," said Webster, who has stored a three-month supply of food and water at his home in case of an outbreak.

Frightening Warning

"Society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die. And I think we have to face that possibility," Webster said. "I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role."

Most scientists won't put it that bluntly, but many acknowledge that Webster could be right about the flu becoming transmissible among humans, even though they believe the 50 percent figure could be too high.

Researcher Dr. Anne Moscona at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center said that a human form may not mutate this year or next — or ever — but it would be foolish to ignore the dire consequences if it did.

"If bird flu becomes not bird flu but mutates into a form that can be transmitted between humans, we could then have a spread like wildfire across the globe," Moscona said.

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Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug

2006-03-13T19:25:00.001-08:00

By Geoffrey Lean and Jonathan Owen
Published: 12 March 2006

Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease.

More than 60 countries have so far ordered large stocks of the antiviral medication - the only oral medicine believed to be effective against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease - to try to protect their people. The United Nations estimates that a pandemic could kill 150 million people worldwide.

Britain is about halfway through receiving an order of 14.6 million courses of the drug, which the Government hopes will avert some of the 700,000 deaths that might be expected. Tamiflu does not cure the disease, but if taken soon after symptoms appear it can reduce its severity.

The drug was developed by a Californian biotech company, Gilead Sciences. It is now made and sold by the giant chemical company Roche, which pays it a royalty on every tablet sold, currently about a fifth of its price.

Mr Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and was its chairman from 1997. He then left to join the Bush administration, but retained a huge shareholding .

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Ready or Not, Bird Flu Is Coming to America

2006-03-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

ABC news
By BRIAN ROSS

Officials Advise Stocking Up on Provisions -- and Warn That Infected Birds Cannot Be Prevented From Flying In

March 13, 2006 — In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

Ready or not, here it comes.

It is being spread much faster than first predicted from one wild flock of birds to another, an airborne delivery system that no government can stop.

"There's no way you can protect the United States by building a big cage around it and preventing wild birds from flying in and out," U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns said.

U.S. spy satellites are tracking the infected flocks, which started in Asia and are now heading north to Siberia and Alaska, where they will soon mingle with flocks from the North American flyways.

"What we're watching in real time is evolution," said Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And it's a biological process, and it is, by definition, unpredictable."

Industry Precautions

America's poultry farms could become ground zero as infected flocks fly over. The industry says it is prepared for quick action.

"All the birds involved in it would be destroyed, and the area would be isolated and quarantined," said Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council. "It would very much [look] like a sort of military operation if it came to that."

Extraordinary precautions are already being taken at the huge chicken farms in Lancaster County, Pa., the site of the last great outbreak of a similar bird flu 20 years ago.

Other than the farmers, everyone there has to dress as if it were a visit to a hospital operating room.

"Back in 1983-1984, we had to kill 17 million birds at a cost of $60 million," said Dr. Sherrill Davison, a veterinary medicine expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Can It Be Stopped?

Even on a model farm, ABC News saw a pond just outside the protected barns attracting wild geese.

Artiticle Continues

Bird flu targeting the young

2006-03-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

As death toll nears 100, scientists scramble to explain why H5N1 virus is killing healthy people under 40

Mar. 11, 2006. 07:57 AM
RITA DALY
STAFF REPORTER

With the World Health Organization set to announce the 100th death from bird flu any day now, data compiled by the Toronto Star lead to one particularly compelling question: Why does the H5N1 virus attack the young?

The Star's analysis shows that all but six of the 97 people who have died globally so far from bird flu were under 40.

People, in other words, with the strongest immune systems and not, as one might expect, the elderly and those already sick. The median age was 19, and a quarter of them were under age 12.

Children, teenagers and young adults are the unfortunate victims of the deadly H5N1 bird flu sweeping through poultry farms in Asia, Africa and now Europe.

Hooked up to breathing tubes and dialysis machines in local hospital beds, bodies soaked in sweat, and blood oozing from their nostrils and mouth, they have a mere 50 per cent chance of pulling through. The rest die in a matter of days.

Any day now the World Health Organization will announce the 100th death from the bird flu that re-emerged in late 2003.

Yesterday, health officials confirmed a 4-year-old Indonesian boy died last month, bringing the number of confirmed cases to 176 and the world death toll to 97. Another three deaths in Azerbaijan are under investigation.

Although human cases are uncommon, it is now apparent the H5N1 will eventually reach North American shores, possibly via migratory birds in Alaska within six to 12 months. So what health experts know about how and whom it strikes is crucial.

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Bird flu risk to humans higher in Europe, spreading across globe

2006-03-08T16:14:00.000-08:00

AFP
March 8, 2006

BERLIN - A German minister claimed that deadly bird flu was moving closer to infecting humans in Europe after two more cats died of the virus, while China reported its 10th human fatality.

And Albania became the latest European country to report an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu strain, as international veterinary experts warned that the United States, Canada and Australia will probably not escape the ever-spreading disease.

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Bird Flu Virus May Infect One Third of World's Population-Russian Expert

2006-03-08T16:07:00.001-08:00

Image by MosNews.com

Created: 07.03.2006 15:18 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:44 MSK
MosNews

One-third of the world's population might become infected with bird flu in a short period of time, Director of the Russian Academy of Science's Virology Research Institute Dmitry Lvov said, according to Interfax.

"Any pandemic (flu) virus appears as a result of crossing between a human virus and a bird virus. A highly pathogenic monster emerges and it can affect up to one-third of the world's population in a short period of time," he said.

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Girl dies of bird flu in China, UN ups campaign

2006-03-08T16:00:00.000-08:00

Wed Mar 8, 2006 04:57 AM ETBy Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - A nine-year-old girl has died of bird flu in China, state media said on Wednesday, as the United Nations stepped up efforts to battle the rapidly spreading virus.

The girl, China's 10th known death from bird flu, died on Monday night in the eastern province of Zhejiang, the official Xinhua news agency said.

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Bird flu reaches sixth German state

2006-03-05T12:32:00.000-08:00

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has been confirmed in Lower Saxony, the sixth German state to be reached by the virus.

A wild goose found dead last Sunday tested positive for the strain, said ministry spokesman Gert Hahne.

Germany's first cases of the virus, announced on February 14, were on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which still accounts for most of the approximately 140 confirmed cases.

It was also in Ruegen that authorities found a cat had died of H5N1, the only case of the virus in Germany not found in a wild bird.

Lower Saxony borders Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to the west and is home to 72 million of Germany's 125 million domestic birds.

The goose with H5N1, however, was not found near a poultry farm, officials said.

Another two wild birds also tested positive on Saturday in Schleswig Holstein - the state to the north of Lower Saxony.

The new finds make a total of seven wild birds that have tested positive for H5N1 there.