Bird Flu Bombshell

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Possible Human To Human Transmission of Bird Flu In Indonesia - Cluster - Stock Up On Disaster Supplies Recommended By US Authorities

May 18th 2006


WHO Threat Chart

The World Health Organization (WHO) has not ruled out human-to-human transmission in a recent outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu. Six family members have died since they met at a family gathering on April 29th, while a seventh victim is still alive. This is the largest cluster of cases, closely related in time and place, reported to date.

The researchers are not sure how the initial case was contracted. Almost all human H5N1 cases have been linked to close contact with sick or dead birds. The WHO speculates that these cases may have been due to a “shared environmental exposure”.

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HUMAN-TO-HUMAN BIRD FLU SUSPECTED IN INDONESIA

Seven Indonesian Bird Flu Cases Linked to Patients (Update1)
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, 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. Six of the seven people have died.

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.

`Directly Linked'

``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.

While investigators have been unable to rule out human-to- human transmission in the Sumatran cluster, they continue to search for other explanations for how the infections arose, the WHO statement said.

Health experts are concerned that if H5N1 gains the ability to spread easily among people, it may set off a lethal global outbreak of flu. While some flu pandemics are relatively mild, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

So far, studies of the Sumatran outbreak and genetic analyses of the virus don't indicate the virus has undergone major changes, Cheng said. Scientists at WHO-affiliated labs in the U.S. and Hong Kong found no evidence that the Indonesian strain of H5N1 has gained genes from pigs or humans that might change its power or spreading ability, WHO said.
HUMAN-TO-HUMAN BIRD FLU SUSPECTED IN INDONESIA


Mutations

``These viruses mutate all the time and it's difficult to know what the mutations mean,'' Cheng said.

Health officials earlier found strong evidence of direct human-to-human spread of H5N1 in Thailand in 2004. Scientists reported in the Jan. 27, 2005, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that the H5N1 virus probably spread from an 11-year- old girl in Thailand to her aunt and mother, killing the mother and daughter. People who had more casual contact with the girl didn't become infected.

In the Sumatran cluster, close, direct contact with a severely ill person was also needed for spread, Cheng said. Preliminary findings from the investigation indicate that the woman who died, considered to be the initial case, was coughing frequently while the three others spent the night in the same room. One of the three, a second brother, is the sole survivor. The other two, her sons, died.

``It looks like the same behavior pattern'' of close contact and caretaking during illness with the bird flu virus, Cheng said. To raise the level of pandemic alert ``it would have to be transmissible from more casual contact.''

General Community

The Indonesian Ministry of Health and international scientists are continuing their investigation to trace the origins of the infections, the WHO said in its statement.

``Priority is now being given to the search for additional cases of influenza-like illness in other family members, close contacts, and the general community,'' the WHO said. ``To date, the investigation has found no evidence of spread within the general community and no evidence that efficient human-to-human transmission has occurred.''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=aWESsJvt6CFE&refer=asia

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Oprah's Show Tells Viewers How to Prepare For Bird Flu Pandemic - Winfrey Interviews Avian Influenza Expert Doctor

June 4th 2006


Influenza Virus

The Oprah Winfrey show concerning the bird flu re-ran again Saturday night after the local news. It was an eye opening conversation with Dr. Michael Osterholm. He is an infectious disease expert from the University of Minnesota. Osterholm told the audience that “there really are, in a sense, three different kinds of influenza viruses. There is that which naturally lives in wild birds. That virus doesn't really hurt us very often."

The second type is the seasonal flu which kills 36,000 people a year in the US. The third type is the one experts are worried about. This is the flu that may infect both birds and humans. According to Osterholm, “That's when we see a pandemic, or a worldwide epidemic. And that's what we worry about."

Viruses are different from bacteria. They are smaller and require a host cell to reproduce. Most scientists believe viruses are not living things, but exist as a protein coat or capsid, sometimes enclosed in a membrane. According to UC Berkley researchers, viruses insert their genetic material into host cells, causing the host cell to reproduce more viruses. In some cases, viruses may remain dormant before they are stimulated.

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Canada finds bird flu case, plans further testing

Fri Jun 16, 2006 6:55 PM ET

By Louise Egan and Marcy Nicholson

OTTAWA/WINNIPEG (Reuters) - Canada has detected a case of H5 avian flu in the eastern province of Prince Edward Island and plans further testing over the weekend to determine whether it is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, government officials announced on Friday.

A gosling in a small backyard poultry flock in the western end of the tiny province contracted the disease but there is a low risk of human illness from the outbreak, officials said.

The last Canadian outbreak occurred in November 2005 on the other side of the country, in British Columbia, and involved low-pathogenic H5N2 strain. In that case no birds actually showed signs of illness but 60,000 ducks and geese were culled nonetheless.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said there is no evidence that the latest bird flu case is the high-pathogen H5N1 strain that has spread to 48 countries so far since its resurgence in 2003.

If it is, it would be the first case in the Americas. The H5N1 strain has killed 129 people in nine countries since 2003, mostly in Asia.

"Just because the virus was there does not mean that's what killed the geese," said CFIA veterinarian Jim Clark.

"Ducks and geese are natural reservoirs for avian influenza viruses. The viruses exist quite nicely in their intestinal tract and cause absolutely no illness or death in the birds. That would be the situation in this case," he said.

A sample from the non-commercial flock of about 35 ducks, geese and chickens was brought to the Atlantic Veterinary College for testing after four goslings became sick on June 4, Clark said. The geese were not imported and there were no known links to Asia.

The CFIA has culled the entire backyard flock and is monitoring a 3 km (2 mile) zone around the property.

Prince Edward Island has only seven commercial chicken farms -- compared with over one thousand in top producer province Ontario -- and there are none within a 10 km (6 mile) radius of the affected farm, industry group Chicken Farmers of Canada said.

"We are alert but not alarmed, at this period in time," said Lisa Bishop-Spencer, a spokeswoman for the group. "We're going to wait for the results before we really react ... the fact that other birds appeared healthy is a very good sign in our eyes."

Not all H5 viruses are highly pathogenic and not all will cause severe disease in poultry.

Prince Edward Island's health officer, Dr. Lamont Sweet, told Reuters that the results of further bird flu tests were expected next week.

He downplayed any risk of transmission to humans but issued a warning nonetheless.

"People need to continue washing their hands carefully after handling poultry," Sweet said.

Canada, which has had numerous low pathogenic outbreaks, reported a case of H5N9 bird flu in 1966, which was highly pathogenic, and a case of high pathogenic H7N3 in 2004.

[Nictoe]

WHO: Bird Flu Virus Mutated in Indonesia

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 23, 2006
Filed at 6:32 a.m. ET

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- A World Health Organization investigation showed that the H5N1 virus mutated in an Indonesian family cluster on Sumatra island, but bird flu experts insisted Friday it did not increase the possibility of a human pandemic.

The virus that infected eight members of a family last month -- killing seven of them -- appears to have slightly mutated in a 10-year-old boy, who is suspected of having passed the virus to his father, the WHO investigative report said.

It is the first evidence of possible human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus, said Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He added that the virus died with the father and did not pass outside the family.

''It stopped. It was dead end at that point,'' he said, stressing that viruses are always slightly changing and there was no reason to raise alarm bells.

The findings appeared in a report obtained by The Associated Press that was distributed at a closed meeting in Jakarta attended by some of the world's top bird flu experts.

The three-day session that wraps up Friday was convened after Indonesia asked for international help checking the virus, which has killed 39 people there.

Experts fear the virus will mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, potentially starting a pandemic. So far, it remains hard for people to catch, and most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds.

WHO concluded in its report that human-to-human transmission likely occurred among seven relatives infected with the H5N1 virus in a remote farming village on Sumatra island. An eighth family member who was buried before specimens could be taken is believed to have been infected by poultry, a WHO report said.

Despite the virus' slight mutation in the father and son, Uyeki insisted that an analysis suggested there was ''nothing remarkable about these viruses.''

Bird flu has killed at least 130 people worldwide since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003.

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Alaska villagers living in bird flu's flight path

What has brought the Eskimos sustenance for generations now may carry the deadly virus into North America

By JIA-RUI CHONG, Times Staff Writer
October 22, 2006

THE 800 YUP'IK ESKIMOS in this wet and lonely village knew the situation was serious when government scientists began swooping in on bush planes.

Except for a few doctors that fly in each year to give villagers checkups, outsiders rarely visited this outpost of scattered gray plywood homes and prefab structures plopped in the middle of the tundra.

Soon, latex gloves appeared on store shelves and Wild West-style posters started popping up around town: "Wanted: Birds of the Delta." Researchers camped out in the town's tribal council offices, preparing for trips to nearby Kwigluk Island with vials, swabs, nets and needles.

They came bearing a warning: The wild birds that the Yup'ik have hunted for millenniums may be carrying the first traces of the deadly bird flu virus from Asia into North America.

"It's kind of scary, you know," said resident Ronnie Peter, 39. "That's like, our food, you know."

The H5N1 avian influenza emerged in China 10 years ago and has since spread into Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Though the virus mainly infects fowl, since 2003 it has sickened 256 people and killed 151 around the world.

Kipnuk lies at the crossroads of an invisible freeway system linking migratory birds that journey along the East Asia-Australia flyway with those from the Pacific Americas flyway.

Tens of millions of birds flock every year to this seemingly endless expanse of soggy land in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge to feast on insects, grasses, worms and mussels before heading back south in the winter to Asia, Australia and other parts of the Americas.

"If it's going to show up in wild birds, Alaska is the most likely place where it's going to happen," said Brian McCaffery, a federal wildlife biologist who was camped a few miles down the coast from Kipnuk collecting bar-tailed godwit droppings for testing.

Federal officials have identified 29 bird species that are most likely to carry the deadly virus from Asia, and they have enlisted local hunters to help provide birds for testing.

In the old days, the Yup'ik Eskimos felled the uqsuqaq, metraq and kanguq with bows and throw sticks tipped with sharpened walrus ivory.

Now, the men use 12-gauge shotguns and reach remote hunting spots in motorboats.

Little else has changed — until now.

"Oh Lord, what are we going to eat? Store-bought food?" thought Steven Mann, who oversees tribal operations in town, when he first started receiving faxes on bird flu safety in the spring.

The nervousness has waned through the summer, said the 58-year-old ex-Army sergeant, but still, "We don't joke about what we eat here."

Mann's son, Danny, a lanky 27-year-old who used to work as a bilingual parent liaison for the school, took on the job of bird flu testing manager in Kipnuk for the tribal health agency, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. He gets $15 for every bird he samples.

At the tribal council offices, he was on the phone, checking in with hunters. "Got any birds?" he asked Peter, who goes hunting just about every day except Sunday.

"How many?" Danny Mann asked. "Can I come over and check them?"

Mann threw on a jacket, grabbed a blue Nike duffel bag and headed out. As a light drizzle enveloped the village, he strode across the boardwalks that lie across the marshiest parts of town. The hollow sound of his steps echoed in the still afternoon.

The residents of Kipnuk, which means "bend in the river" in Yup'ik, are a little bewildered that their speck of a village has been drawn into the battle against the bird flu virus.

No roads lead here. The closest Wal-Mart is nearly 500 miles away. The flatland that spreads out between the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers is so riddled with lakes and creeks that it looks like Swiss cheese from the air. The slate-gray Bering Sea is only a few miles away.

The coastal location is one reason health officials chose Kipnuk as one of 10 villages for testing. The other main reason is the vigor of its hunters.

Kipnuk villagers hunt intensely through the summer, stocking up on birds, which they usually roast into a crispy meal or boil into a soup made with onions, rice and macaroni. Peter keeps two freezers stuffed with various birds — some plucked, some not.

Mann climbed up the steps to Peter's porch and dug into a pile of common eiders, pintail ducks, a shoveler and a Canada goose.

Mann snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and started filling out a form on the birds.

He peeled the paper packaging around a long swab and inserted it into an eider through its cloaca, a combination genital, intestinal and urinary tract. Mann put the swab, now covered in a greenish-white goop, into a vial.

As Peter's 4-year-old son, Quentin, danced around with a plastic light-saber, Mann repeated the procedure for the other birds.

Mann headed back to his mother's house, where he crept under the front staircase and lifted the lid of a white canister filled with liquid nitrogen. As cold white vapors curled out, he dropped in his handful of vials, which he would send away for analysis.

Mann said he swabbed as many as 300 birds in the first round of sampling in May. In September, he collected about 50 samples. To get more hunters involved, the health agency raffled off a 55-gallon drum of gasoline for each round of testing, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the summer. Villagers got one raffle ticket for each bird they turned in.

So far, government inspectors have taken 18,000 samples from birds all over Alaska. They have found no bird flu.

Still, Mann said, there are so many birds from so many places that pass through this forbidding terrain that detecting the virus is "not a matter of if, but when."

"Whenever I see birds, I always think what birds will be the first to get bird flu around here," he said.

The health corporation began preparing residents in the spring with a newsletter outlining some of the dangers of bird flu.

The newsletter's advice was simple: Don't eat, drink or smoke when cleaning birds, and cook the meat thoroughly.

This has caused some problems.

One of the delicacies of tundra life is half-cooked eider. "The reason why we eat them half-cooked is we won't get hungry for hours and hours," explained Andrew Dock, 39, who won the barrel-of-gas raffle after collecting more than 100 tickets.

He still eats his eider half-cooked.

Steven Mann explained the thinking in Kipnuk this way: "I like to compare the flu to Al Qaeda. They're clear on the other side of the world. We hear about them, but we're not scared."

After thousands of years, it's hard to bend traditions.

Peter, an affable, goateed man who served in the Army National Guard for 19 years, goes hunting in a dark green jacket spotted with droppings, one of the primary carriers of the virus.

He seeks out feces. It is an ancient technique to find birds.

"I've been around it all my life," Peter said, explaining that the elders always told him to "look for more bird poop."

As the wind whipped around him, Peter and his hunting buddy, James Active III, whom everyone calls Big Boy, stalked across a meadow looking for dinner. Peter held his shotgun low in one hand. The only sound was the babbling of geese and Peter's calls to them: "Luk, luk, luk."

He scrambled over spongy tufts of lichen and crowberry and waded through the sedge-lined marsh, the smell of rotten eggs rising from his footprints.

As a chill set in, he disemboweled his birds in the traditional style: hooking one finger into the cloaca and tearing out the intestines with one motion.

He wiped his hand on the damp grass.

Peter said he was worried, but not that worried, yet. "Nobody's gotten sick," he said.

A few minutes later, he dug his fingers into a container of agutak, a dessert known as Eskimo ice cream, made of tundra berries, sugar and Crisco.

Still a bit hungry, he shook a helping of trail mix into his soiled hands and poured it into his mouth.

[theLIBERTARIAN]

Kentucky Fried Chicken is make a big point that if you cook the birds, then it kills the virus.

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South Korean authorities say that they have killed nearly 100,000 chickens and ducks because of an outbreak of the H5N1 bird-flu virus at a chicken farm in North Cholla province last week. The outbreak occurred 155 miles south of Seoul the Agriculture Ministry said.

Although they have already culled 96,000 poultry, the ministry is not done according to the Associated Press. They say that they plan on killing 236,000 birds and an unspecified number of other animals including pigs, dogs and cats in the area.

The North Koreans are concerned too, according to Reuters. North Korea is stepping up measures to prevent the spread of bird flu, its official media said on Monday. They have already dealt with two poultry outbreaks back in February of 2005.

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Nucleoprotein molecules

Since Antibiotics can not be used to cure viral infections, it has been very difficult to treat viruses, but new research may change this. Scientists at the University of Texas, Austin (UT) and Rice University say that a new drug could target certain stains of the influenza virus including the N5N1 Bird Flu.

The researchers say that a flu protein called nucleoprotein (NP). NP plays a vital role in all strains of influenza A, including Hong Kong flu, Spanish flu and bird flu, according to the researchers. Biochemists at Rice and UT found that even minor changes to the tail prevented NP from fulfilling one of its roles – linking together into structural columns that the virus uses to transmit copies of itself.

Jane Tao says “There is a small binding pocket for the tail loop of the protein that appears to be a promising target for a new class of antiviral drugs. We know from previous genetic studies that this tail loop is almost identical across strains of influenza A, so drugs that target the tail have a high potential of being effective against multiple strains, including the H5N1 strains. Such new antivirals are especially needed at the moment as some H5N1 viruses are resistant to the flu drug Tamiflu." Tao is the lead researcher and assistant professor in biochemistry and cell biology.

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Bird flu hits three Asian countries

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2007

Bird flu has re-emerged in Asia with human infections and dead ducks reported in three countries, sparking concerns of a possible pandemic that could kill millions of people.

Indonesia officials said a 14-year-old boy died from bird flu on Wednesday, four days after being warded. He is believed to have caught it from infected poultry.

Another Indonesian - a 37-year-old woman - was infected, also likely to have been from sick birds.

In China, officials said a farmer from Anhui had contracted the disease in December but had recovered. In Vietnam, tests on 70 dead ducks were positive for the H5N1 virus, the government said.

The World Health Organisation said the Indonesian was in intensive care and that "initial investigations suggest sick poultry as the possible source of infection".

The deadly virus has claimed 58 lives in Indonesia, more than in any other country.

"The challenge was to identify where the virus was hiding and how it was circulating"

Henk Bekedam, WHO representative in China

Chinese officials said a 37 year-old farmer from the eastern province of Anhui had contracted bird flu in December but was released from hospital after he "fully recovered".

China's health ministry and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Monday that the farmer surnamed Li had tested positive for the H5N1 strain.

Those who have had close contact with him were quarantined for medical observation but were released after showing no signs of illness.

Medical officials were baffled as to how Li had contracted bird flu when there had been no reported outbreak among poultry in the area.

China has the world's biggest poultry population and millions of backyard birds roaming free.

Henk Bekedam, WHO's China representative, said the challenge was to identify where the virus was hiding and how it was circulating.

"It's not to say that the virus is not somehow still circulating, but that the detection of that circulating virus has become much more difficult because of the active engagement of the government in avian influenza control," he said.

Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that can be passed on easily between people, leading to a pandemic.

The last reported human case of bird flu in China was in July last year when a farmer died in the northwestern region in Xinjiang.

In Vietnam, tests on 70 dead ducks were positive for the H5N1 virus, a government report said on Wednesday.

Discovery of the dead birds prompted health workers to slaughter 1,800 more ducks in two communes in Kien Giang province in the southern Mekong Delta, the animal health department said.

Checkpoints have been set up in the two areas to prevent movements of birds for sale.

The WHO said bird flu has killed 42 of 93 people infected in Vietnam.

The virus still mostly affects bird but it has infected 263 people in 10 countries since 2003, killing 157 of them.

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Bird Flu With No Symptoms



A South Korean man was infected with the Bird Flu but showed now signs of the illness, making him the second case of a non-symptomatic H5N1 infection since nine people were found to be infected after participating in a chicken slaughter from late 2003 to March 2004. The N5N1 Bird Flu usually causes severe illness with symptoms.

The 40 year old man came into contact with the pathogen from a nearby chicken farm. The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) performed tests on 26 residents near four poultry farms in North Jeolla Province where the bird flu was detected last November and December.

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A previously unknown and dangerous strain of the H5N1 bird flu has emerged from southern China and has spread from birds to people in South-east Asia, marking a third wave of avian flu and rekindling fears of a global pandemic.

Although the H5N1 avian influenza mostly affects birds and infects people only sporadically, the new strain will once again raise fears that it may mutate or combine with a human virus to form a mutant or hybrid capable of passing from person to person, triggering a pandemic where millions of lives may be lost.

"The implications of this study are that current control measures, as generally practised to control avian influenza, are ineffective," said Prof Yi Guan of the University of Hong Kong, leader of a large team that describes the virus today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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