avian flu updates page 10

[Martin]

Avian flu page 9 at

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=161313&highlight=avian



Mysterious Illness Infections Grow in Sharkan Udmurita Russia

Recombinomics Commentary
August 12, 2005

The number of sick people by unknown infection in the village Of sharkan (Udmurtia) in the past week increased it almost twice and reached 64 people. It reports about this Territorial division Of rospotrebnadzora in Votkinsk city.

According to the information of physicians, among the sick 48 children of up to 14 years.

As previously it reported IA REGNUM, first victims began to enter the infectious department of the central district hospital of the village Of sharkan on 27 July. Is established the fact of bathing sick in the open reservoirs of the village Of sharkan and adjacent reservoirs 7-10 days prior to the beginning of disease. The places of bathing were not coordinated by the administration of village with Rospotrebnadzorom and they do not correspond to sanitary regulations.

On 11 August, according to the data of clinical picture and biochemical laboratory investigations, are confirmed the final diagnoses: the sharp virus infection of enteroviral etiology in 17 children, sharp respiratory virus infection in 3 people, including in 2 children; acute purulent meningitis in 2 people, GLPS - 1 child.

In remaining patients remain preliminary diagnosis "enteroviral infection, ORVI". In the given moment, the biological material of sick people it is located in the work in the virusological laboratory OF TSGUP "center of hygiene and epidemiology in UR".

The rapid increase in the number of patients is cause for concern, H5N1 has been rapidly spreading along the southern border of Russia and northern border of Kazakhstan. Reported cases are mapped, but some reports suggest the H5N1 wild bird flu is actually ahead of the reported cases, with one report indicating H5N1 was at the mouth of the Volga River earlier this week.

In Vietnam, asymptomatic water fowl excrete large amounts of H5N1, causing potential pollution of rivers or canals. In Tomsk, adjacent to Novosibirsk, there is an outbreak of meningitis in people who have used the river or canal.

Monitoring the spread of H5N1 in migratrory birds,termed "wild bird flu" would be useful as would H5N1 testing of infectious disease associated with rivers and ponds in the migratory bird flight paths.


http://www.recombinomics.com/News/08120504/Mystery_Sharkan_Russia.html

 

[Martin]

Sat 13 Aug 2005

Don't rush to buy bird flu drugs on web, doctors warn

LOUISE GRAY


DOCTORS urged the public yesterday not to "panic buy" medication against an expected flu pandemic.

The spread of bird flu across south-east Asia has led to fears an epidemic will strike worldwide - killing up to 50,000 people in Scotland alone.


To prepare for the worst, governments are buying up Tamiflu - the only drug known to be effective against avian flu in humans.

More than 1.2 million doses of the anti-viral treatment are being stockpiled in Scotland to be given to key workers and the vulnerable while scientists scramble to develop a vaccine.

But dozens of sites have already sprung up on the internet offering the prescription-only drug to anyone willing to fill in a form. Such purchases are illegal under UK law.

Bird flu has killed 61 people in Asia, and spread as far as Siberia in birds. The fear is that the virus could eventually mutate into a form that can pass from human to human.

Professor Hugh Pennington, president of the Society for General Microbiology and emeritus professor at Aberdeen University, said he could understand why people might be tempted to buy the drugs.

He said: "People are buying it because there has been so much alarm about this, which is no doubt justified. If the virus is able to go from person to person - as has been suggested - and if it is as nasty as the few cases infected by birds were, we are in deep, deep trouble.

"The worst-case scenario is something worse than the 1918 worldwide pandemic - which killed 40 million people. So you can understand why people are taking precautions."

But Prof Pennington was confident the government's contingency plans were adequate, and advised against buying the drug online. He said: "My position would be that you should not take it without medical advice."

Tamiflu costs up to £6.50 for a 12-hour dose, but Prof Pennington warned that people could be wasting their money. He said the drug would only work if taken at the right time.

"If you give it out like sweeties a lot of people will take it unnecessarily," he said.

The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency said it was aware of prescription-only drugs being sold on the internet. A spokesman said anyone running an internet site based in the UK selling the drug without proper prescriptions faced a fine and up to two years' jail.

Roche, the only company to officially manufacture Tamiflu, does not sell the drug on the internet. A spokesman said the company would report any sites selling the drugs illegally.


http://news.scotsman.com/print.cfm?id=1773642005

 

[Martin]

US Armed Forces Possibly At Risk From H5N1

Analysis by MaxedOutMama


The bird flu continues it's spread as the birds migrate. Soon birds will be flying south for the winter and we can expect further spread of this exceptionally virulent strain that appears to have first emerged this spring in Qinghai, China. A Russian journalist has been hospitalized for illness after visiting outbreak areas in Novosibirsk. No test results are available yet.



Reports of odd illnesses in the affected areas continue (largely associated with contaminated natural bodies of water?), and authorities now seem to be quarantining the human population of some areas. It's too early to tell whether this will be broadly necessary. If it really has reached the Volga delta, it is likely that a lot of birds will become infected and fly south in a month or two. Russia wants to vaccinate all poultry workers. The flu is believed to be spreading in the feces of migratory birds, so there is concern that the wheels of vehicles could carry the virus from one place to another. Poultry farmers are trying to establish heightened security and quarantine measures to prevent infection. Russian authorities now admit that the disease will remain endemic in Siberia.



If this has made it to the Caspian Sea our military forces are likely to encounter the virus with 3-6 months. Iran is to the south and Turkey is west of the Caspian Sea. Both have borders with Iraq. In the south of Iraq are wetlands and birds will fly in there. See this map. The Caspian Sea is the body of water extending down from Russia and Kazakhstan to Iran. The Volga runs into the Caspian Sea and the Volga delta is in the top left of the Caspian Sea.



This map shows a more detailed outline of the area. Note that the outbreaks and protective measures have been reported to the far north in Udmurtia, Omsk, Kurgan, the Altai and Novosibirsk. Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk were reporting sudden pneumonia cases and some sudden deaths last week in humans. Mongolia has had outbreaks. Kazakhstan has outbreaks. Krygzstan may have outbreaks. The virus has emerged in Tibet. As the dots fill in, it becomes clear that the Qinghai strain is moving as rapidly as migrating birds. Unfortunately, our soldiers will soon be in the path of this disease.



H5N1 does not appear to have achieved efficient human-to-human transmission, but neither has West Nile virus. Yet WNV is a significant threat to human health in some areas. Our armed forces need information and protection; they are now vulnerable. A person died in Vietnam from H5N1 recently. He had eaten a bird which had become ill from the virus. At a minimum the Armed Forces should forbid eating any local poultry for troops deployed in Central Asia, Afghanistan or Iraq. A different strain of this virus killed over 100 tigers in India. It is also known to infect swine. Unofficial reports of tests in China claimed it killed mice.



Unofficial reports from Qinghai in China were of over a hundred human deaths. Most were attributed to eating o being in contact with the sick birds. The virus does present a signficant threat to human health in its present form, and no one can properly assess how significant that threat is because we don't yet have enough experience with it. But there should be enough information to warrant stockpiling of drugs for the military (the strain which is spreading so rapidly probably is not amantadine/rimantadine resistant), isolation of the new strain with the purpose of preparing a vaccine likely to be effective against it, institution of sanitary measures and a ban against buying meat to serve to the troops from local markets.



This situation is developing incredibly quickly. From the focal point in Qinghai Lake, China, this strain appears to have spread over a vast land area in three months. The time for the US Army to prepare to the extent possible is now.


http://www.bloggernews.net/showstory.asp?page=blognews/stories/UN0000496.txt

 

[Kim99]

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsflu134382346aug13,0,2467257.story?coll=ny-health-headlines

U.S. stockpiling bird flu medications

BY DELTHIA RICKS
STAFF WRITER

August 13, 2005

Governments and corporations are stockpiling two key medications that are possibly capable of thwarting an infection with avian influenza, but a top New York medical expert said Friday that vaccination remains the most effective, lifesaving course.

Cases of bird flu have been mounting steadily in Asia for nearly two years, the devastating infection having killed 62 of the 112 people who have contracted it. A majority of cases have occurred due to close contact with infected birds. Experts say if the virus acquires the genes necessary for person-to-person transmission, then the makings of a pandemic would be under way.

International SOS, a company that provides medical services for multinational corporations, is advising its clients abroad to stockpile antiviral drugs in case of a pandemic, said Kevin Morris, vice president of marketing with the organization's division in Philadelphia. The company serves many Fortune 100 corporations with divisions worldwide.

A CDC representative Friday said the government has no policy barring private corporations from stockpiling the drugs. Morris said companies are not being advised to stockpile a specific drug. The World Health Organization has cited Tamiflu and Relenza as the only two believed capable of thwarting H5N1, the flu strain.

Morris said preparing for a possible pandemic is one way for multinational corporations to protect assets. Orders for Tamiflu rival the run on the antibiotic ciprofloxacin four years ago in the wake of the anthrax scare, health officials say.

Terry Hurley, a spokesman for Roche, said the company is receiving Tamiflu orders from both governments and corporations. "We have received and are filling - on schedule - pandemic stockpile orders from 25 countries worldwide.

"Countries such as the UK, France, Finland, Norway, Switzerland and New Zealand are ordering enough Tamiflu to cover between 20 to 40 percent of their population."

The U.S. government has purchased more than $130 million of Tamiflu alone for the nation's pharmaceutical stockpile, used in emergencies.

Nancy Pekarek, spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Relenza, said the company has received orders for its antiviral drug. Among its clients, the German government ordered 1.7 million doses.

Dr. Gary Kalkut, an infectious disease specialist and medical director at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, said despite the unique ability of antivirals, vaccination is still the best way to prevent flu, possibly even a pandemic strain. An experimental vaccine passed its first hurdle in clinical trials this past week.

"The drugs have to be started early enough, usually within the first two days [of infection] to be effective," Kalkut noted.

Tamiflu and Relenza inhibit a viral protein called neuraminidase, thus thwarting infection.

 

[Kim99]

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-08/13/content_468680.htm

Tibetan bird flu outbreak 'under control'

(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-08-13 07:14

An outbreak of the deadly H5N1-type bird flu has been brought under control in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The outbreak, at a chicken farm in the suburbs of Lhasa, the region's capital, killed 133 birds, there were no human infections.

"China National Bird Flu Reference Laboratory confirmed on August 10 that the H5N1 strain of avian influenza had been found at a chicken farm in Duodi Township, Chengguan District of Lhasa," an official with the regional government said on Friday.

The regional Bureau of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry official, who declined to be identified, said 133 infected birds died of the virus early this month, prompting the culling of 2,608 birds at the farm.

Regional authorities put strict measures in place to prevent the spread of the disease.

"The outbreak has been brought under control," the official said in a telephone interview, adding that animal health experts are investigating how the birds became infected.

No similar cases have been reported in other parts of the plateau region, bureau sources said.

In accordance with requirements for preventing and limiting the highly infectious H5N1 strain of bird flu, the autonomous region has adopted measures such as emergency inoculation of all fowl within 5 kilometres of the suspected outbreak.

Monitoring of all breeding farms in Lhasa has been tightened, and a daily epidemic reporting mechanism put in place.

Up to now, vaccinations for waterfowl have been distributed across Tibet except in Ngari Prefecture, according to the bureau sources.

The Ministry of Agriculture said it had informed the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the world animal health body OIE of the outbreak earlier this week.

It is the second report of the H5N1 virus in China this year following one in May in Qinghai Province.

China successfully brought 50 cases of bird flu under control last year.

 

[Kim99]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002435744_wdig12.html

Friday, August 12, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

World Digest

Farm sealed off, poultry inoculated to curb bird flu

Beijing
China has sealed off a farm in far-western Tibet and inoculated poultry within a three-mile radius after discovering a strain of bird flu likely to be deadly to humans, state media said today.

The world animal-health body OIE said the virus was likely to be the H5N1 strain that has killed more than 50 people across Asia and led to the deaths of some 140 million birds.

More than 2,600 chickens on the farm belonging to the Regional Institute of Animal Husbandry Science in a suburb of Tibet's capital, Lhasa, had been slaughtered, Xinhua news agency said, adding the compound had been quarantined.

 

[Kim99]

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/08130502/H5N1_Migration_Explodes_Russia.html

Commentary
.
H5N1 Wild Bird Flu Migration Explodes in Southern Russia

Recombinomics Commentary
August 13, 2005

In the October region of the Chelyabinsk province there is suspicion to the "bird influenza". This it is discussed in the communication of the Ministry of Agriculture RF, extended on Friday. "at present in the October region of the Chelyabinsk province arose the suspicion to the disease of birds by influenza of one populated area, located near reservoir", reports the Minsel'khoz - Ministry of Agriculture.

In the communication it is also indicated that in the Kurgan province the disease of birds by influenza is confirmed in seven populated areas of two regions, on the suspicion are found 9 additional points in four regions. "in all unhappy points are conducted limiting measures", reports the Minsel'khoz - Ministry of Agriculture.

In Tyumen' Oblast the disease established in 9 points and in 9 lakes is located suspicion to the disease of wild birds by influenza. In five of six populated areas the poultry in a quantity of 18,5 thousand heads is completely destroyed.

In Omsk region the disease is confirmed in seven points (two populated areas and five lakes) and 19 points are under suspicion. In all populated areas, including finding under the suspicion, are introduced limiting measures.

According to the data Of rossel'khoznadzora, in the Novosibirskaya Oblast is confirmed the presence of virus in 15 populated areas, in which are destroyed 56,6 thousand head of poultry. The 25 additional populated areas of region are under suspicion.

In the Altai edge the disease is confirmed in 6 points of two regions, while in 3 points of three regions is a suspicion to the disease. In the unhappy points the quarantine is introduced and the destruction of sick and suspicious on the disease birds is begun. "in all suspicious on the disease points are selected the tests of pathologic material for conducting of laboratory investigations", reports the Minsel'khoz - Ministry of Agriculture.

The above machine translated descriptions indicate H5N1 wild bird flu is expanding dramatically in Novosibirsk and points west along Russia's southern border (see map). The leading edge of the advance now appears to be entering the province of Chelyabinsk. The large number of additional points under suspicion suggests that there are additional unreported locations in northern Kazakhstan and the advance of the H5N1 has probably already entered European Russia.

As the weather cools more migration into Europe is expected. At Qinghai Lake, at least 5 species were affected, but that is probably a very low estimate. The H5N1 at Qinghai Lake was very virulent in experimental chickens, killing them with 20 hours. Similarly, experimental mice died within 3-4 days. Thus, it is likely that most species at the reserves can be infected, although some may be asymptomatic. In the OIE report from Novosibirsk, isolates from 13 locations were described. In addition to birds that had died and had H5N1 virus and antibodies, there were birds that were alive with virus and antibodies as well as birds alive with just antibodies. Thus, non-fatal infections were demonstrated, which is fueling the spread.

Initial cases in Russia were clustered in the Chany Lakes region in Novisbursk. Now that regions has the highest number of suspected cases for this month, but the number of cases in adjacent Omsk and Kurgen provinces is evidence for significant movement west toward Europe.

The H5N1 isolated from Qinghai Lake has been fully sequenced and the virus is clearly a recombinant, with portions of all eight genes matching isolates in Europe as well as Asia. The HA and HA protein have changed considerably from the isolates in Vietnam and the vaccine being developed worldwide against the 2004 H5N1 isolate from Vietnam is unlikely to offer much protection against the wide bird flu rapidly spreading along Russia's southern border. The H5N1 wild bird sequences at Novosibirsk are closely related to the Qinghai isolates.

Surveys of birds in Mongolia have begun as those birds begin migrating east and south. In the past H5 has been isolated from Chany Lake in Novosibirsk, as well as Primorie in southeastern Russia. These birds will also begin migrating to the south, so further mingling of migratory birds can be expected. In southeast Asia, these birds will also come into contact with endemic H5N1 which will lead to more dual infections and more evolution. The H5N1 in southeastern Asia has been confirmed to cause fatal H5N1 infections in humans and the newly arriving sequences will lead to new problems in the upcoming months.

 

[Martin]

H5 flu in a bigger flock

14aug05

A GLOBAL flu pandemic could be triggered by 14 different types of avian influenza -- not only Asia's H5 bird flu.




As scientists race to develop a vaccine to combat the spread of H5, another 13 subtypes of influenza A could become a deadly threat to humans. It has been estimated a flu pandemic could kill between 13,000 and 44,000 Australians within six to eight weeks.

Previous global pandemics -- the Spanish influenza in 1918, the Asian influenza in 1957 and the Hong Kong influenza in 1968 -- were caused by the H1, H2 and H3 viruses respectively.




http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,16249487%5E663,00.html

 

[Kim99]

Scientists check for arrival of avian flu from Asia
Virus may kill 60,000 in California despite new drug, study says


By DAVID WHITNEY
BEE WASHINGTON BUREAU
Last Updated: August 14, 2005, 04:26:59 AM PDT

WASHINGTON — They know it's coming. Hospitals already are monitoring for its arrival with every patient who checks in. Now scientists are swabbing wild bird bottoms in California and elsewhere in a hunt for the first signs of the deadly virus.

What has scientists worried is not the fact that the avian flu virus H5N1 already has killed at least 60 people overseas. Or that it has spread from Southeast Asia to China and Russia.

What has them convinced about the diminishing odds of escaping a worldwide health catastrophe — one study estimates that fatalities in California could top 60,000 — is that wild birds overseas no longer seem to be dying.

That means the virus is mutating, and scientists fear it has now adapted so that it can survive the annual migration of wild birds from Asia to North America without killing its hosts.

"That's a real danger sign," said veterinarian Carol Cardona of the University of California at Davis.

Cardona is part of the growing army of scientists and health care professionals gearing up to fight what could become the first flu pandemic since 1918, when a Spanish flu virus — also believed to have been spread by birds — killed between 20 million and 40 million people around the world.

More Americans died in that outbreak than were killed in World War I. And already the projections are that the next pandemic, perhaps just months away, will kill similar numbers of people.

So far, the virus has not mutated or combined with other influenza viruses so that it can spread from human to human.

"The great fear is that we will see a version of H5N1 that will spread very easily from person to person," said David Daigle of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Migrating birds may bring flu

"Most experts believe it is not a question of if, but when," he said.

According to a recent report by the Trust for America's Health, the U.S. toll could surpass 540,000.

In California, the report said, deaths could top 60,000 and hospitalizations could exceed 273,000 — unfathomable given that number is four times the amount of hospital beds in the state, according to the California Hospital Association.

Ken August, spokesman for the California Department of Health Services, said that if the nightmare scenario develops, mass quarantine of infected patients and other mandatory steps to stop the virus' spread could be inevitable.

"We could face asking the public to take some extraordinary measures," August warned.

Already, he said, hospitals throughout the state have been asked to begin monitoring for patients reporting unexplained respiratory illness and who have traveled recently to Southeast Asia.

"What we're concerned about is the flu virus mutating into something that no one has experienced and that would cause severe illness and death," he said.

While scientists and health officials stress that there is no evidence of an Asian variety of the H5N1 virus in the United States now, it could arrive at almost any time with passengers unloading from an overseas flight from Thailand, China or Russia.

Or it could arrive on the wings of an infected bird.

UC Davis' Cardona is helping oversee in California a national effort to detect the virus' avian arrival.

This year, she said, about 2,000 nonmigratory wild birds will be checked to see if they have any signs of the Asian H5N1 virus. The nonmigratory birds are easier to locate and swab, she said, and they are likely to pick up the disease from waterfowl and other birds migrating down from Alaska on the Pacific Flyway.

The goal is to keep the virus from poultry farms in the Central Valley and Southern California before they become breeding grounds for a deadly form that can be transmitted from human to human.

"We all believe that wild birds are not likely to cause a pandemic without an intermediate host for the virus," she said. "And poultry are likely to be that host."

Already, she said, poultry growers and backyard farmers are being urged to keep the water and feed for their chickens and ducks protected from wild birds so that the virus can't be passed along.

The deadly strain of the H5N1 virus was first detected in Southeast Asia more than two years ago. Tens of millions of domestic ducks and chickens have been slaughtered and burned to stop its spread, but the virus quickly migrated.

More than 60 people who have come into contact with sick birds have died.

While there have been no reports of the virus being transmitted between people, British researchers reported finding the H5N1 virus in the spinal fluid of a young Vietnamese boy earlier this year, indicating that the virus is mutating to the point it can infect the human brain.

Researchers working on a drug to fight the virus have been surprised by its mutation.

Recently there have been reports from the National Institutes of Health that a drug known commercially as Tamiflu has shown promise in studies involving rats that it could suppress the spread of the virus.

"That's very encouraging," said August of the California Department of Health Services. "But to produce enough for all Americans and then to distribute it to all who need it would be an enormous challenge."

That point was highlighted by the Trust for America's Health report. It said that if the 5.3 million doses of Tamiflu in federal possession were distributed on the basis of population, only about 639,000 of California's 30 million people would get the medicine.

The report's conclusions are grim.

"Overall, U.S. pandemic preparedness is inadequate," it said. "Both the federal pandemic plan and various state pandemic plans are insufficient for a national response to a pandemic influenza."

California is better off than most states.

Two years ago, the trust praised California for the way it had spent $160 million it had received for bioterrorism preparedness, citing it as one of the top four states in terms of preparation.

"One of the benefits of our preparedness for bioterrorism isthat we have an improved network of laboratories, we've improved our system for identifying outbreaks and we've strengthened our communication between public health, law enforcement and public officials," August said.

"But we can never be fully prepared for a pandemic."

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/1...-11843612c.html


Of course, they're telling us not to buy tamiflu, if you can get it.
__________________

 

[Kim99]

This is interesting. Just last week they said they weren't worried about it

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L1161634.htm

Dutch step up measures to prevent Russian bird flu
11 Aug 2005 15:12:07 GMT

Source: Reuters

AMSTERDAM, Aug 11 (Reuters) - The Dutch Agriculture Ministry will step up measures to prevent a possible spread of bird flu found in Russia, which is dangerous for humans, the ministry said on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the bird flu outbreak extended its reach in Russian Siberia and spread to Mongolia, while neighbouring Kazakhstan confirmed it had found a deadly strain of the disease that can infect humans.

There are concerns that migrating birds could spread the disease further to Europe and eventually the United States.

"The migrating birds in Russia pose a risk for a spread of the bird flu infection," the Dutch ministry said after playing down the risk facing the Netherlands last week.
"We are intensifying monitoring of migrating birds and we will examine birds' droppings every week," the ministry said in a statement. "Migrating birds in Siberia are coming our way ... and will pass the Netherlands at some point."

Kazakh official said earlier on Thursday that the deadly bird flu strain, H5N1, had spread to three more villages after been found a day earlier in a village in the northern Pavlodar region that borders Russia [nL1114075].

The strain has killed more than 50 people in Asia since August 2003. Although no humans have yet been affected in Kazakhstan or Russia, there are fears the disease could spread to humans on the Eurasian landmass.

Bird flu is split in strains such as H5 and H7, which in turn have nine different subtypes. H5N1 subtype is highly pathogenic and can be passed from birds to humans, although there have been no known cases of human to human transmission.

The Netherlands, one of the world's biggest meat exporters, was hit by an outbreak of bird flu disease in 2003, which led to the slaughter of a quarter of all Dutch poultry at a cost of hundreds of millions of euros.

Local poultry farms are being tested regularly since then.

 

[Kim99]

Sunday, August 14, 2005

A front of virulent epidemics requires bold action

By WILLIAM H. FRIST
GUEST COLUMNIST

Like everyone else, politicians tend to look away from danger, to hope for the best and pray that disaster will not arrive on their watch even as they sleep through it. This is so much a part of human nature that it often goes unchallenged. But we will not be able to sleep through what is likely coming soon -- a front of unchecked and virulent epidemics, the potential of which should rise above our every other concern.

Today, more than a quarter of all deaths -- 15 million each year -- are due to infectious diseases. These include 4 million from respiratory infections, 3 million from HIV/AIDS and 2 million from waterborne diseases such as cholera. This is a continuing and intolerable holocaust that, while sparing no class, strikes hardest at the weak, the impoverished and the young.

As sobering as this may be, we've been nonetheless in a quiescent stage of the mutability of pathogens -- a hiatus from which they are now poised to break out.

When viral diseases evolve normally -- such as in the typical course of the human influenza virus undergoing small changes in its antigenicity and killing an average of 500,000 people annually throughout the world -- it is called an antigenic drift.

When they emerge with the immense power derivative of a jump from animal to human hosts followed by mutation or recombination with a human virus -- as in the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 in which 500 million people were infected and 50 million died, including half a million in the United States -- it is called an antigenic shift.

Antigenic shifts are the result of random, fortuitous and unavoidable changes. Human population increase, concentration and spread, intensification of animal husbandry and greater wealth in developing countries brings animals both wild and domestic into closer contact with ever larger numbers of people. War, economic catastrophe and natural disasters subdue active measures of public health. The unprecedented societal overuse and misuse of antibiotics build unprecedented resistance within the microbial universe to our even most powerful ammunition. Travel, trade and climate change bring into contact disparate types and strains of disease.

As a consequence of all this, microbes evolve, mutate and find new lives in new hosts.

The evidence suggests that we could be at the threshold of a major shift in the antigenicity of not merely one, but several categories of pathogens. HIV, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (mad cow), avian influenzas such as H5N1 and SARS -- all are merely the advance patrols of a great army forming out of sight, the lightning that, however silent and distant, gives rise to the dread of an approaching storm, a storm for which we are unprepared.

How can that be? How can the richest country in the world, with its great institutions, experts and learned commissions, have failed to make every preparation -- when preparation is all -- for epidemics with the potential of killing off large segments of its population?

In the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, the mortality rate was 3 percent, which seems merciful in comparison with the 50 percent mortality rate of today's highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu. In just the past 18 months, avian flu has caused the death or destruction of more than 140 million birds in 11 Asian nations. And, most alarming, in four of those nations, H5N1 has taken the worried jump from birds to infect humans.

Should the virus shift and human-to-human transmission become sustained, the cost in human lives could be substantial -- especially when vaccine would not become available, at best, until six to nine months after the outbreak of a pandemic. And even then, the vaccine would not be available to every American. Nor do we have enough of the only effective anti-viral agent Tamiflu stockpiled to treat more than 1 percent of our population.

To meet this threat, I propose an unprecedented effort -- a "Manhattan Project for the 21st century" -- not with the goal of creating a destructive new weapon, but to defend against destruction wreaked by infectious diseases such as H5N1 and biological weapons.

Such a project would include substantial increases in support for fundamental research, medical education, emergency capacity and public health infrastructure; the unleashing of the private sector and unprecedented collaboration among government and industry and academia; and the creation of secure stores of treatments and vaccines and vast networks of distribution.

But, above all, I speak of action -- without excuses, without exceptions -- with the goal of protecting every American and the capability to help protect the people of the world.

Many benefits other than survival would follow in train. We will come to understand diseases that we do not now understand and find the cures for diseases that we cannot now cure. It will add to the economy both a potent principle of organization and a stimulus like war, but war's opposite in effect. It will power the productive life of the country into new fields, transforming the information age with unexpected rapidity into the biotechnical age that is to come.

All this, if the nation can be properly inspired in its own defense and protection -- perhaps just in time. We must open our eyes to face the single-greatest threat to our safety and security today, but also to seize our greatest single opportunity.

Such an effort would not come without difficulties. But the United States is as blessed today as it has been since its beginnings. We are the wealthiest, freest and most scientifically advanced of all societies, the first republican democracy and the first modern state.

This is an urgent matter concerning not only the United States, but also the world -- for pandemics know neither borders, nor race, nor who is rich nor who is poor. They know only what is human, and it is this that they strike, casting aside the vain definitions that otherwise divide us.

It is my pre-eminent obligation as a public servant and my sacred duty as a physician to make this proposal. In respect of human mortality, for the sake of our families and children, for the honor and satisfaction of doing right, I bid the nation to join in a "Manhattan Project for the 21st century."
William H. Frist, M.D., is the majority leader of the Senate.
His essay was adapted from the Fifth Annual Marshall J. Seidman Lecture at the Harvard Medical School. The full text of the lecture is available on the senator's Web site (frist.senate.gov).

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opini..._disease14.html
__________________

 

[Martin]

Clues to pandemic fight may lie in N.Y. state




Canadian Press

Updated: Sat. Aug. 13 2005 2:51 PM ET

TORONTO — As public health experts struggle to plan ways to rapidly vaccinate hundreds of millions of people when a flu pandemic next strikes, some researchers are looking to a small group of individuals in Rochester, N.Y., in the hopes of finding a shortcut.

These people are part of a tiny number in the world who were vaccinated in the late 1990s against an H5 strain of avian influenza, an older cousin to the H5N1 viruses currently provoking such anxiety around the globe.

By giving this group a single shot of a newly developed H5N1 vaccine, researchers hope to start puzzling out answers to two key questions: How long can the immune system remember novel strains of avian influenza? And can priming the body's protective force to fight a previously unseen flu virus arm it to later battle a related pandemic strain?

"If we can pull it off, that will be very interesting,'' Dr. John Treanor, head of the vaccine trials unit at the University of Rochester, says of the study he hopes to get underway shortly.

"We could learn a lot.''

Treanor says his team has already started tracking down volunteers from the earlier trial and is hopeful enough will re-enlist to make any findings statistically sound.

British researchers also conducted a study on an H5 vaccine in the late 1990s and have a small pool of people they too could investigate to help answer the same questions.

"We would like to do that study,'' says Dr. Iain Stephenson, an influenza researcher at the Royal Leicester Infirmary, where the earlier trial was done.

But while Treanor's group has received government support for this new work, Stephenson and his colleagues are still trying to persuade European funding bodies to give their study a green light.

Flu experts and public health leaders believe it is crucial to learn as much as possible about how people respond to vaccines against H5 flu viruses, which have never circulated among humans.

The mere scores of people around the globe who've been vaccinated against the virus could be an invaluable virtual laboratory for that work.

"We have to take advantage of every bit of information that is available or could be made available to inform our knowledge about the immune system's response to novel influenza antigens -- starting with H5, the one we are so worried about now,'' says Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office, which leads pandemic planning efforts in the United States.

The urgency of getting such answers became even more apparent this month when data from the first trials into the current H5N1 vaccine revealed it will only protect against the deadly strain when given in massive doses.

It took two shots of 90 micrograms each -- 12 times the amount of antigen needed to protect against regular flu strains -- to produce good levels of neutralizing antibodies.

That dosing regime would be a public health nightmare, gobbling up so much scarce antigen to protect each person that the world's flu vaccine makers' combined output might cover as few as 75 million people in the first year of a pandemic, when the bulk of deaths would likely occur.

A variety of inventive strategies to eke the most protection out of the globe's limited vaccine production are being looked at. But one idea gaining support is the notion of pre-vaccinating or pre-priming a population in the period before a pandemic begins.

"The issue of pre-priming people with H5N1 in the inter-pandemic period is being actively discussed,'' Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has admitted.

Protection against a totally new subtype of influenza requires two shots, a primer to kick-start the immune system and a booster to complete the job. For optimal protection, the shots should be given about a month apart and the vaccine should be as closely matched to the circulating flu strain as possible.

But pre-priming would involve giving people a first dose well in advance, allowing for a much quicker public health response once a pandemic starts. The director of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control says that would be a "terrific'' approach, if it works.

"It should allow the delivery of a vaccine in a much shorter period of time and to generate the population level of immunity that we need to protect populations in a shorter period of time,'' Dr. Robert Brunham says.

Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious-disease expert at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, agrees the idea is "highly attractive,'' but says many questions would need to be answered before a plan to start immunizing mass numbers of people against the H5N1 strain in advance of a pandemic could be endorsed.

"You really want that data,'' she says of the findings Treanor's study could generate.

The work could show whether a regime in which the interval between the two shots is stretched -- upwards of a year -- would still produce an effective immune response.

It could also show whether vaccinating with a mismatched primer/booster combination could work. In other words, would a primer vaccine made from a 2004 H5N1 virus and a booster vaccine made with a 2006 H5N1 virus provoke good protection against that mutated 2006 strain?

Treanor knows his study can't answer all the questions that would need to be addressed before pre-priming could be seriously considered. But it is a start.

"If it looks good, we'll combine that with other bits of information about booster responses and what happens when you combine H5 with the regular (annual flu) vaccine and all sorts of things like that to have the information you need to then start the debate,'' he says.



http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/print/CTVNews/1123959517278_66/?hub=Health&subhub=PrintStory

 

[Martin]

Bird-flu pandemic just ‘plane ride away’

Officials watch state for signs of outbreak

LES BLUMENTHAL; The News Tribune
Last updated: August 14th, 2005 10:33 AM (PDT)

WASHINGTON – Every morning, a dozen or so staffers at the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department get together to review records from hospital emergency rooms and ambulance calls from the previous 24 hours.
It’s part of the department’s surveillance effort to detect infectious diseases. Four ambulance calls overnight could be a sign of a meningitis outbreak. During the winter, a spike in flu-type cases could signal the outbreak of the flu season or that people were getting sick from eating a bad batch of cottage cheese.

And as health officials worldwide warn of a global outbreak of avian influenza, the department’s early warning system could offer the first indication the disease has arrived locally.

“We are assuming there is a strong possibility in the near future there will be a flu pandemic,” said Joby Winans, a spokeswoman for the health department. “If it’s not this one, it will be another one.”

Though avian flu has been confined to Asia so far, public health officials in Washington state are taking the threat seriously.

They’re preparing for the worst even as the Bush administration has proposed cuts in federal funding for agencies already cash-strapped because of bioterrorism responsibilities in the wake of Sept. 11.

A recent study estimated more than 1.4 million people in Washington state could contract avian flu in a pandemic, with 48,600 requiring hospitalization. The flu could result in the deaths of almost 11,000 people in the state, according to the Trust for America’s Health, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan research group.

Nationwide, about a quarter of the U.S. population could be infected, 2.3 million people hospitalized and more than a half-million could die, the research group estimated.

“The warning signs that are lining up are extremely troublesome,” said Shelley Hearne, the group’s executive director.

Because it is a gateway to and from Asia, the Pacific Northwest could be one of the first regions in the United States affected. More than 1,200 people arrive daily at Sea-Tac Airport from Asia. Another 900 land in Portland and 4,000 more at Vancouver, B.C.

A steady stream of ships from the Far East calls at the ports of Tacoma and Seattle.

“It puts the area at a little higher level of risk,” Hearne said. “It (avian flu) could be a plane ride away.”

The West Coast also could be a gateway for the geese, ducks and other migrating birds that carry avian flu.

In Alaska, birds from Asia mingle with fowl that migrate up and down the Pacific Flyway. Field biologists there hope to take intestinal samples from 5,000 birds to check for the disease.

A similar effort is under way in California.


Due for a major outbreak


First detected in 1997, avian flu, or H5N1, has been found in birds and poultry in nine Asian countries. More than 100 people have been stricken by the disease and at least 60 have died. Tens of millions of birds have been destroyed in an effort to contain the disease.

So far, the disease has spread only to people who have come into contact with infected birds. There are no reported cases of the disease having spread human to human. But that could be just a matter of time.

“All it may take is someone to have avian flu and regular flu at the same time,” said Hearne.

Epidemiologists predict a flu pandemic will emerge three or four times every 100 years.

During the past century, a pandemic of so-called Spanish flu killed 20 million to 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19.

Outbreaks of the Asian flu in 1957-58 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968-69 each killed more than 1 million people worldwide.

“Certainly we are due for a major flu outbreak,” said Mary Selecky, secretary of the Washing- ton state Department of Health. “It’s absolutely prudent for state and local agencies to start planning.”

Selecky said her department and local health agencies in the state had a jump-start on planning for a flu pandemic as a result of the SARS – sudden acute respiratory syndrome – scare in 2002. Because of Washington state’s location on the Pacific Rim, its potential per capita rate for SARS was considered one of the highest in the nation, she said.

Although there were suspected cases of SARS in the state, none was confirmed. But Selecky said it was a dry run for what could be expected if there were an outbreak of avian flu.

“We saw the potential for a pandemic needed to be a high priority,” she said.

The state has a “robust” plan, updated continually, for dealing with a massive flu outbreak, Selecky said.

The state has run “tabletop exercises,” including one with officials from Vancouver, B.C., to test its plan. It also is tightening its existing surveillance system, as early detection and containment are critical.

If a nightmare scenario unfolds, Selecky said, state and local public health officials could declare an emergency and close businesses, halt mass transit operations and cancel public events such as meetings and concerts.

“We could just tell a community to stay home,” she said.


Fighting for federal funding


State officials have been talking to the business community, law enforcement agencies and local governments about what could happen.

They have launched a public education campaign about the need for “respiratory etiquette” and hygiene.

Hearne said Washington is better prepared than a lot of places.

“They have a good public health system, they have surveillance systems and they have hired some of the best and the brightest,” she said.

Even so, the one thing Selecky said the state could use more of is federal funding. Selecky, who recently testified before Congress, said the administration has provided no additional funding to help public health agencies prepare for a flu pandemic. Instead, the White House has said the agencies should use dollars earmarked for bioterrorism planning.

But Selecky said the administration has proposed cutting the bioterrorism funding by $130 million in the next fiscal year.

“Public health has been under-funded for decades,” she said. “We need more money to expand the system, not just piling things on.”

Local health officials agree.

“It’s a little scary,” said Tacoma-Pierce County’s Winans. “We are already lean. We can staff 9 to 5, five days a week. But a flu pandemic would be 24/7.”

She said a draft plan – including contingencies for setting up 18 to 20 emergency clinics across the county and isolating people who might have the virus or quarantining those who have been exposed to it – has been prepared in Tacoma and Pierce County,

“It’s an ongoing discussion, almost daily,” she said. “We write plans, we test them, we rewrite them.

“Are we thoroughly prepared? No. But we are far down the road.”

Les Blumenthal: 202-383-0008

lblumenthal@mcclatchydc.com

Originally published: August 14th, 2005 12:01 AM (PDT)



http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/v-printer/story/5100494p-4645103c.html

 

[Kim99]

Russia warns bird flu may spread to Europe, mid-east

Mon Aug 15, 2005 1:45 PM BST

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/new...C545914_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BIRDFLU-RUSSIA-WORLD.xml

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's top state epidemiologist said on Monday that a bird flu outbreak in Siberia could spread through Russia's key agricultural areas in the south and then on to the Middle East and Mediterranean countries.

"An analysis of bird migration routes has shown that in autumn 2005...the H5N1 virus may be spread from Western Siberia to the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea," Gennady Onishchenko said in a letter to Russian regional health officials.

The letter was posted on the Website of the state's consumer rights watchdog.

"Apart from Russia's south, migrating birds may spread the virus to nearby countries (Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Mediterranean countries) because bird migration routes from Siberia also go through those regions in autumn," he said in the letter

 

[Kim99]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D4FB69F5-4682-4399-8A75-477B46054700.htm

Russia cordon aims to contain bird flu

Monday 15 August 2005, 15:25 Makka Time, 12:25 GMT

Russia cordoned off roads and slaughtered hundreds of birds to contain the advance of a bird flu epidemic towards Western Europe.

The outbreak, previously confined to five remote areas of Siberia, has struck a major industrial region - Chelyabinsk in the Ural mountains, which separate Asia from Europe.

"All ill and infected birds are being slaughtered there," the Agriculture Ministry said on Monday in a statement.

It was unknown whether the virus found in Chelyabinsk was the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed more than 50 people in Asia since 2003 and has hit Russian Siberia as well as Kazakhstan and Mongolia since mid-July.

Carried by flocks of wild birds migrating from Siberia to warmer regions, the virus has been steadily moving westwards through the regions of Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Omsk, Kurgan and Altai.

Chelyabinsk, separated from European Russia by the Ural mountains and technically still in Siberia, is the westernmost region to have been struck.

Spreading fast

"All ill and infected birds are being slaughtered there"

Agriculture Ministry statement

It is about 1000km from the region where the first flu outbreak was reported.

Although no humans have been affected, there are fears the disease could spread to humans on the Eurasian landmass, possibly unleashing a global influenza pandemic.

Media reported that roads leading to the infected village of Oktyabrskoye in Chelyabinsk had been cordoned off to prevent the virus from spreading.

In other affected regions, police boosted road checks, and 400 domestic birds were culled in Chelyabinsk to block the virus that has killed more than 10,000 birds countrywide.

Wild birds

Officials said wild birds, increasingly active in August as they prepare to migrate ahead of winter, were to blame.

"Results of epizootic checks have shown that they (migrant birds) are the main source of infection," Ria-Novosti news agency quoted an official with the Novosibirsk state consumer rights watchdog as saying.

There was no word on Monday on the situation in Kazakhstan and Mongolia where bird flu has been registered along their sprawling borders with Russian Siberia.

Reuters

 

[Kim99]

People are beginning to notice
The Reveres at Effect Measures

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, August 15, 2005
People are beginning to notice

George (El Presidente). Julie (Director of CDC). Wake up. People are beginning to notice.

While researchers furiously pursue defenses against the expected outbreak of a deadly international flu, the U.S. policymakers remain amazingly passive about pandemic preparations.

This Editorial in the The Philidelphia Inquirer
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/...al/12376798.htm
(reg. required) also takes the administration to task in its tardy and insufficient efforts at getting a vaccine ready. The recent announcement that a vaccine has passed its first tests is now the subject of furious backtracking as everyone realizes the tests revealed the dose needed was so large there was no hope of adequate manufacturing capacity for some time--even supposing the vaccine works, which is not yet established, nor if it does work for the strain it was designed for, whether that will be the strain that eventually is the source of a pandemic.
Over the years the government has left the task of developing a vaccine to the drug companies, who, it turns out, weren't actually doing it because they could make so much more money selling impotence drugs or pain medications with serious side effects. The Inquirer notes this but then goes on to suggest that better incentives are needed.

Not true. We need a better Administration. One that would recognize that if the market doesn't work (and everyone agrees in this case it hasn't) we would have taken the necessary steps to do the research, development and manufacture of an influenza vaccine (an ongoing need) with public funds and for an overriding public purpose: the safety and security of our citizenry. The President doesn't mind spending incredibly large amounts of our money for what he thinks is necessary in that regard. Let him do it with a far smaller sum for what everyone else recognizes is necessary.

posted by Revere
http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com
__________________

 

[Kim99]

http://www.vnagency.com.vn/NewsA.asp?LANGUAGE_ID=2&CATEGORY_ID=29&NEWS_ID=162935

US, Viet Nam cooperate in bird flu control
08/15/2005 -- 17:37(GMT+7)

Ha Noi (VNA) - A US delegation led by Steward Simonson, Assistant Secretary for Public Health Preparedness of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), arrived in Ha Noi on August 14 to explore new avenues of cooperation with Viet Nam in combating avian influenza.

During four days in Viet Nam, the delegation will meet with officials from the Ministries of Public Health and Agriculture and Rural Development, according to the Ha Noi-based US Embassy's press release issued on August 15.

Since the SARS outbreak in 2003 and throughout the avian influenza outbreaks in 2004 and 2005, the DHHS and Viet Nam's Ministry of Health have closely collaborated through the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The cooperation has included consultations, training courses, workshops and exchanges of scientists and samples.--Enditem

 

[Kim99]

http://www.tass.ru/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2318072&PageNum=0

Officially bird flu affects ten Altai districts with population of over 30,000 people

BARNAUL, August 15 (Itar-Tass) - Bird flu is raging in ten districts of Russia's Altai territory with a population of over 30,000 people, the regional department of the Rospotrebnadzor Federal Service for Consumer Protection and Human Welfare said.

"In Zavyalovsky district, from which the infection began to spread, medics hospitalized a boy suspected of falling ill with bird flu, but subsequent tests did not confirm the diagnosis," Rospotrebnadzor officials told Itar-Tass.

There are no people sickened by bird flu in the region, they noted.

Fourteen villages suffered economic losses because of the infection. The death of poultry stopped in nine of them.

Six settlements remained quarantined. Veterinary services are culling all poultry there and paying compensation to the population. Disinfections measures are being implemented.

Specialists from veterinary and medical services make daily rounds of households checking the compliance with quarantine measures and running medical examination of residents.

According to official statistics, there are 2,500 poultry in the quarantined area, but the actual number of is two to three times higher.

The Kamen-na-Obi and Talmenka districts are under threat of the bird flu infection that may come from the neighboring Novosibirsk region. Specialists said the disease is spread by waterfowl. The outbreak is expected to peter out in autumn, when birds of passage begin to leave Siberia.

 

[Kim99]

http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=11363058

Aug 15 2005 12:12PM
Russia loses over 10,000 domestic, wild birds to flu - ministry
MOSCOW. Aug 15 (Interfax) - Since July 21 10,896 domestic and wild birds have died of bird flu in the Altai, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Kurgan and Tyumen regions, the press service of the Emergency Situations' Ministry told Interfax Monday morning.

Seventeen teams from several ministries and agencies are operating in the infected areas, three of them representing the Emergency Situations' Ministry. The effort to contain the epidemic involves 493 people and 152 pieces of equipment, the press service said.

 

[RAT]

Bump...

...keep these threads regarding H5N1 going!!!

VERY important information you folks are contributing!

 

[LMonty911]

Fears for Europe as bird flu spreads west

By Neil Buckley in Moscow

Published: August 15 2005 18:27 | Last updated: August 15 2005 18:27

Finamcial Times

The bird flu virus has spread west to a sixth Russian region, increasing fears that it could be carried to Europe.

Russia's agriculture ministry said on Monday the virus had been found in a village in the Chelyabinsk region, on the eastern slopes of the Ural mountains, which separate Europe and Asia, but it did not say whether it was the H5N1 strain that can be fatal in humans.

The virus has now swept about 1,000km westwards through Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Omsk, Kurgan and Altai, despite the slaughter by Russian authorities of tens of thousands of birds in affected areas. A senior Russian doctor warned on Monday it could reach European Russia this autumn.

Gennady Onishchenko, Russia's chief sanitary doctor, warned in a letter to regional consumer protection officials that some birds nesting in Siberian regions already infected with the virus had migrated to southern Russia for the winter or stopped there on the way to Africa or Europe.

Bird migration routes ran through Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine and Mediterranean countries, Dr Onishchenko said, according to Ria-Novosti news agency.

“The 2006 spring migration may result in a spread of the A/H5N1 contagious virus across European Russia because birds migrating from European Russia and Siberia have common winter nesting areas,” he said.

The H5N1 strain, which can pass from birds to humans, has killed at least 57 people in south-east Asia since 2003. Doctors fear it could cause a global epidemic if it mutated into a form that can spread easily from one human to another, though there have so far been no known cases of human transmission.

Russia's emergency situations ministry said on Monday no humans had been infected in the Siberian outbreak. By Monday, some 10,896 birds had died from bird flu since the Siberian outbreak began on July 21. More than 18,000 birds had been culled by the authorities in Tyumen, and 56,000 in Novosibirsk, the worst-affected areas.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/285cff9a-0db1-11da-aa67-00000e2511c8.html




Bird Flu Reported in Sixth Russian Region

MOSCOW, Aug. 15 (Xinhuanet) -- Bird flu was reported Monday in Russia's Urals region of Chelyabinsk, the sixth region in the country affected by the virus.

The bird flu virus was found in 60 birds that died in the village of Oktyabrskoye on Saturday and Sunday, Vice Governor of Chelyabinsk Andrei Gasilov told the Interfax news agency.

To prevent the spread of the epidemic, 400 birds were slaughtered in the village.Quarantine has been imposed in the areasurrounding Oktyabrskoye.

Chelyabinsk is the westmost region to have been struck by the epidemic so far.

Other Russian regions hit by the flu include Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Omsk, Kurgan and Altai.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said in a press release that the flu has killed 10,896 domestic and wild birds in these regions since its outbreak in mid-July.

Nearly 500 people are involved in the efforts to contain the epidemic, the press release said.
http://www.periodico26.cu/english_new/world/flu150805.htm

 

[Martin]

Washington state officials watch for flu pandemic
By LES BLUMENTHAL
McClatchy Newspapers
August 15, 2005

- Every morning a dozen or so staffers at the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department in Washington state get together to review hospital emergency room and ambulance call records from the previous 24 hours.

It's part of the department's surveillance effort to detect infectious diseases. Four ambulance calls overnight could be a sign of a meningitis outbreak. During the winter, a spike in flu-type cases could signal the outbreak of the actual flu season or that people were getting sick from eating a bad batch of cottage cheese.

And as health officials worldwide warn of a global outbreak of avian influenza, the department's early-warning system could offer the first indication the disease has arrived locally.

"We are assuming there is a strong possibility in the near future there will be a flu pandemic," said Jobe Winans, a spokeswoman for the health department. "If it's not this one, it will be another one."

Though avian flu has, so far, been confined to Asia, health officials in Washington state are taking the threat seriously - preparing for the worst even as the Bush administration has proposed cuts in federal funding for agencies already cash-strapped because of bioterrorism responsibilities in the wake of 9/11.

A recent study estimated that more than 1.4 million people in Washington state could contract avian flu in a pandemic, with 48,600 requiring hospitalization. The flu could result in the deaths of almost 11,000 people in the state, according to the Trust for America's Health.

Nationwide, about one-fourth of the entire U.S. population could be infected, 2.3 million people hospitalized and more than a half-million could die, estimated the nonprofit, nonpartisan research group based in Washington, D.C.

"The warning signs that are lining up are extremely troublesome," said Shelley Hearne, the group's executive director.

Because it is a gateway to and from Asia, the Pacific Northwest could be one of the first regions in the United States affected. More than 1,200 people arrive daily at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport from Asia. Another 900 land in Portland, Ore., and 4,000 more at Vancouver, British Columbia. Ships from the Far East call at the ports of Tacoma and Seattle.

"It puts the area at a little higher level of risk," said Hearne. "It (avian flu) could be a plane ride away."

The West Coast could also be a gateway for the geese, ducks and other migrating birds that carry avian flu.

In Alaska, birds from Asia mingle with fowl that migrate up and down the Pacific Flyway. Field biologists there hope to take intestinal samples from 5,000 birds to check for the disease. A similar effort is under way in California.

First detected in 1997, avian flu, or H5N1, has been found in birds and poultry in nine Asian countries. More than 100 people have been stricken by the disease and at least 60 have died. Tens of millions of birds have been destroyed in an effort to contain the disease.

So far, the disease has spread only to people who have come in contact with infected birds. There are no reported cases of the disease having spread human to human. But that could only be a matter of time.

"All it may take is someone to have avian flu and regular flu at the same time," said Hearne.

Epidemiologists predict a flu pandemic will emerge three or four times every 100 years. During the last century, a pandemic of so-called Spanish flu killed 20 million to 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19. Outbreaks of the Asian flu in 1957-58 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968-69 each killed more than 1 million people worldwide.

"Certainly we are due for a major flu outbreak," said Mary Selecky, secretary of the Washington state Department of Health. "It's absolutely prudent for state and local agencies to start planning."

Selecky said her department and local health agencies in the state have had a jumpstart on planning for a flu pandemic as a result of the SARS - Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome - scare in 2002. Because of its location on the Pacific Rim, Washington state's potential per capita rate for SARS was considered one of the highest in the nation, she said.

Although there were suspected cases of SARS in the state, none was confirmed. But Selecky said it was a dry run for what could be expected if there was an outbreak of avian flu.

"We saw the potential for a pandemic needed to be a high priority," she said.

The state has a "robust" plan, updated continually, for dealing with a massive flu outbreak, Selecky said. The state has run "tabletop exercises" to test its plan, including one with officials from Vancouver, British Columbia. The state is also tightening its existing surveillance system, as early detection and containment is critical.

If a nightmare scenario unfolds, Selecky said, state and local public health officials could declare an emergency and order businesses to close, mass-transit operations to halt and public events like meetings and concerts to be canceled.

"We could just tell a community to stay home," she said.

State officials have been talking to the business community, law-enforcement agencies and local governments about what could happen. They have launched a public education campaign about the need for "respiratory etiquette" and hygiene.

Hearne said Washington state was better prepared than a lot of places.

"They have a good public health system, they have surveillance systems and they have hired some of the best and the brightest," she said.

Even so, the one thing Selecky said the state could use more of is federal funding. Selecky, who recently testified before Congress, said the administration has provided no additional funding to help public health agencies prepare for a flu pandemic; instead, the White House has said the agencies should use dollars earmarked for bioterrorism planning. But Selecky said the administration has proposed cutting the bioterrorism funding by $130 million in the next fiscal year.

"Public health has been underfunded for decades," she said. "We need more money to expand the system, not just piling things on."

Local health officials agree.

"It's a little scary," said Tacoma-Pierce County's Winans. "We are already lean. We can staff 9 to 5, five days a week. But a flu pandemic would be 24/7."



http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=PANDEMIC-WEST-08-15-05&cat=AN

 

[Kim99]

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItem...ge=T&Title=Southern+News+-+Tamil+Nadu&Topic=0

When it started raining birds

Monday August 15 2005 11:57 IST
VELLORE: On Saturday, Vaniyambadi town and its suburbs witnessed a bizarre phenomenon. The residents woke up to an astounding sight of kites falling dead from the sky before them.

Some of the birds were half-dead and panting for life. Locals tried to feed them with water, but to no avail. And a stunned town watched cluelessly as the kites died in agony.

Remarked 70-year-old Jadaiyan, a watchman at a coconut grove in Periyapettai area, “This might be a bad omen. I have already collected carcasses of 50 birds from my grove.”

Rani, another caretaker of a coconut grove in Chennampet area, said she was horrified to find about 100 dead birds littered around it. The kites, which were a rare sight in the region, had died only in a confined area along the banks of the Palar river.

Saleem, a municipal councillor, said he informed the municipality immediately, which collected the dead birds and buried them in the compost yard. Municipal officials said that they collected around 70 birds.

Conservator of Forests A Samanth Singhar said that two teams of veterinarians and forest officials have been formed to go into the matter. The teams sent two samples to the Tamil Nadu Veterinary University of Animal Sciences and three to the regional forensic laboratory at Vellore.

The local veterinarians conducted post-mortem on four birds and the materials were sent for analysis. Though the reason is not yet known, speculations are rife that they could have died after eating carcasses of poisoned animals.

Another theory is that the birds could have been affected by some deadly infection.

According to the third theory, some change in local habitat conditions, possibly due to air and water pollution, could have brought about the problem.

However, as things stand, only the much-awaited test reports can reveal the mystery behind the death of these birds.

The cause of their death is yet to be ascertained.

 

[Kim99]

http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=11363820

Quarantine introduced in eight Altai communities

BARNAUL. Aug 16 (Interfax) - A quarantine has been imposed in eight populated centers of the Altai territory as part of measures to contain the spread of the bird flu outbreak, Vladimir Belousov, chief of the Emergency Situations Ministry's local branch, said on Tuesday.

Bird flu cases have already been confirmed in the villages of Glubokoye and Gonokhovo in the Zavyalovo district, the town of Mamontovo, the village of Proslavukha in the Bayevo district, the villages of Guseletovo and Rassvet in the Romanovo district, and the village of Vtorye Korosteli in the Rubtsovo district, Belousov said.

The official complained that some "local administration heads do not fully realize the gravity of the situation."

2,164 birds have died and another 11,047 have been slaughtered during the bird flu outbreak in Altai, the ministry said.
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http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2321940&PageNum=0

ALMATY, August 16 (Itar-Tass) - Bird flu has been detected in another village in northern Kazakhstan. “In the village of Talapker, the North Kazakhstan Region, over one hundred geese, hens and ducks died on August 8-15. Laboratory tests identified avian influenza,” the territorial department of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Agriculture told Itar-Tass.

The country’s chief sanitary doctor, Asylbek Kozhmuratov said earlier cases of massive poultry death occurred in a number of villages in the Pavlodar, Karaganda, Akmola and North Kazakhstan regions.

In the village of Golubovka, the Pavlodar Region there have been cases of infection with the H5N1 virus, potentially dangerous to humans.

Five thousand birds have died or had to be slaughtered in Kazakhstan so far. Affected territories are being decontaminated and other anti-epidemic measures continue to be taken.

The Interior Ministry has suggested banning the traditional autumn hunting season, as the risk migrant birds may be infected, too, is rather high.
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Commentary
.
H5N1 Wild Bird Flu in Talapker Kazakhstan Targets Mediterranean

Recombinomics Commentary
August 16, 2005

"In the village of Talapker, the North Kazakhstan Region, over one hundred geese, hens and ducks died on August 8-15. Laboratory tests identified avian influenza," the territorial department of Kazakhstan's Ministry of Agriculture told Itar-Tass.

The country's chief sanitary doctor, Asylbek Kozhmuratov said earlier cases of massive poultry death occurred in a number of villages in the Pavlodar, Karaganda, Akmola and North Kazakhstan regions.

The H5N1 wild bird flu in Talapker extends the leading edge of reported outbreaks in northern Kakhzstan / Southern Siberia further east and south toward the Caspian and Black seas.

The path is clearly marked with reports of outbreaks (see map) and defines a pathway that may go across the Mediterranean into northern Africa. The migratory bird pathways intersect and most of the wild birds are waterfowl, but H5N1 infections may involve many species. Some of these birds appear to be asymptomatic, but the deaths of some wild birds and domestic birds create clear migratory paths.

The H5N1 is closley related to the H5N1 sequences from Qinghai Lake in China and the pandemic vaccine under development worldwide is not likely to be effective againsthe wild bird H5N1. However, the isolates at Qinghai Lake had a wild type M2 ion channel, and such isolates should be sensitive to antivirals amantadine and rimantandine.

 

[Kim99]

This is decimating the birds, but hasn't gone H2H yet. Maybe not this year? I'll keep posting.

Deadly bird flu virus is closing in on Europe
By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent

AN OUTBREAK of avian flu among wild and domestic birds in Russia is spreading west and starting to approach Europe, public health officials said yesterday.

The first cases of bird flu have been reported in the Chelyabinsk region of Siberia, close to the Ural mountains that separate Europe from Asia, though scientists are not yet certain that the virus found there is the deadly H5N1 strain.

Roads were cordoned off and hundreds of chickens were slaughtered in Chelyabinsk yesterday to contain the apparent advance of avian flu, first reported in Siberia in July and being spread westward by migrating birds.

Gennadi Onishchenko, Russia’s top state epidemiologist, also predicted that the outbreak could spread to Russia’s most important agricultural areas of Krasnodar, Stavropol and Rostov in the south and then on to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

In a letter to Russian regional health officials, Mr Onishchenko wrote: “An analysis of bird migration routes has shown that in autumn 2005 the H5N1 virus may be spread from Western Siberia to the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. Apart from Russia’s south, migrating birds may spread the virus to nearby countries (Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, and Mediterranean countries) because bird migration routes from Siberia also go through those regions in autumn.”

The virus is being carried by flocks of birds, particularly wild geese and ducks, migrating from Siberia towards warmer regions. It has moved gradually west through the regions of Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Omsk, Kurgan and Altai, as well as into Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Only in Altai, Novosibirsk and Omsk has the type of avian flu been confirmed as H5N1.

The latest region to be affected, Chelyabinsk, is the westernmost so far, about 600 miles (1,000km) from the first reported outbreak.

Roads leading to the infected village of Oktyabrskoye in Chelyabinsk, where 60 chickens have died, have been cordoned off to prevent the virus spreading. “All ill and infected birds are being slaughtered there,” the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.

In other affected regions domestic birds were culled to block the virus that has killed more than 10,000 birds countrywide.

Officials said that wild birds, increasingly active this month as they prepare to migrate before winter, were to blame.

“Results of epizootic checks have shown that they (migrant birds) are the main source of infection,” Ria-Novosti news agency quoted an official with the Novosibirsk state consumer rights watchdog as saying.

The H5N1 strain of avian flu has led to the death from infection and culling of tens of millions of birds across South-East Asia. It has also infected 112 people in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, causing 57 deaths. Russia has not yet experienced any cases of affected human beings.

Scientists are concerned that the H5N1 strain of avian flu could mutate so that it is passed easily from one person to another. If that were to happen, it would have the potential to trigger a lethal pandemic on the scale of the 1918-19 Spanish flu in which 20 million to 40 million people died.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...1736294,00.html

 

[Kim99]

THE NATION
Bush Salts His Summer With Eclectic Reading List

He is tackling three historical sagas while on vacation, impressing even the authors.

By Warren Vieth
Times Staff Writer

August 16, 2005

CRAWFORD, Texas — Gas prices are climbing, motorists are fuming and President Bush is at his ranch with a book about the history of salt.

There could be a connection...

According to the White House, one of three books Bush chose to read on his five-week vacation is "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky, who chronicled the rise and fall of what once was considered the world's most strategic commodity.

The other two books he reportedly brought to Crawford are "Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar" by Edvard Radzinsky and "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History" by John M. Barry.

Bush, a former oil company chief, has not said why he picked Kurlansky's 484-page saga. "The president enjoys reading and learning about history," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

But the analogies between salt and oil are striking.

For most of recorded history, salt was synonymous with wealth. It established trade routes and cities. Adventurers searched for it. Merchants hoarded it. Governments taxed it. Nations went to war over it.

More than four centuries ago, Queen Elizabeth I warned of England's growing dependence on foreign salt. France's salt tax, the gabelle, was one of the grievances that gave rise to the Revolution of 1789.

Then, in the early 20th century, salt became ubiquitous. Refrigeration reduced its value as a preservative, and geological advances revealed its global abundance.

"It seems very silly now, all of the struggles for salt," Kurlansky said. "It's quite probable that some day, people will read about our struggles for oil and have the same reaction."

Kurlansky said he was surprised to hear that Bush had taken his book to the ranch: "My first reaction was, 'Oh, he reads books?' "

The author said he was a "virulent Bush opponent" who had given speeches denouncing the war in Iraq.

"What I find fascinating, and it's probably a positive thing about the White House, is they don't seem to do any research about the writers when they pick the books," Kurlansky said.

Barry, author of "The Great Influenza," said that he too had been a Bush critic. But his views have not deterred the administration from seeking his advice on the potential for another pandemic like the 1918 outbreak that claimed millions of lives worldwide.

Although Barry was not aware that the president planned to read the book, he said he had been consulting off and on with senior administration officials since its release in February 2004. He had lunch with Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt two weeks ago.

The administration, Barry said, was investigating what steps public officials could take to lessen the severity of a flu pandemic. A central theme of Barry's book is that the 1918 outbreak was exacerbated in America by the government's attempts to minimize its significance, partly to avoid undermining efforts to prevail in World War I.

"One lesson is to absolutely take it seriously," Barry said. "I'm not a great fan of the Bush administration, but I think they are doing that. The Clinton administration I don't think paid much attention to it as a threat."

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/natio...5904.story?coll=ny-leadnationalnews-headlines

 

[Kim99]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We must prepare for any pandemic
By Hou Sheng-mou 侯勝茂

Tuesday, Aug 16, 2005,Page 8

The Foreign Affairs journal recently published an extensive report on the possibility of a flu epidemic breaking out in the near future, prompting Taiwan's media and the public to start paying attention to the issue. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a similar warning at the beginning of last year, after reports of human infections by the avian-influenza strain H5N1 surfaced in Vietnam and Thailand. More than a year has passed and the number of human bird-flu infections is on the rise, with people in Cambodia and Indonesia being contaminated by the disease as well.

Recent research suggests that the H5N1 virus has become more flexible in adapting to the environment and limited human-to-human transmissions have taken place. If the virus continues to evolve and becomes easily transmitted from person to person, a pandemic then becomes imminent. Since Taiwan occupies a strategic position in Asia, we cannot disregard this risk.

Throughout history, influenza pandemics have caused massive loss of life and brought adverse social and economic consequences. Therefore, we need to seize all opportunities to prepare for a possible pandemic so that its impact will be restricted as far as possible. The Department of Health (DOH) has been engaging in preparations for a probable pandemic since the beginning of last year. Other than stockpiling antiviral drugs, the DOH declared novel influenza a notifiable communicable disease at the end of last year and set up 460 "sentinels for novel influenza sampling" throughout Taiwan. The purpose of the sentinels is for effective surveillance and prompt provision of antiviral treatment to those suspected of having contracted bird flu. So far all patients who met the sampling criteria have been proven clear of avian influenza through laboratory testing.

In addition, the "National Preparedness Plan for Influenza Pandemic" drawn up by the DOH was passed by the Cabinet in April this year. The core of the plan consists of "three main strategies and four lines of defense."

The three strategies include "flu vaccines, antiviral drugs and public-health intervention."

At the moment, the international community is starting to work on researching and developing an H5N1 vaccine. If mass production for the market becomes a reality, the vaccine will be administered first and foremost on high-risk groups and those responsible for maintaining law and order in society.

In terms of antiviral drugs, the goal is to stock up on enough drugs to innoculate 10 percent of the population and we will attempt R&D in manufacturing technologies for antiviral drugs. In addition, we have stockpiled a substantial quantity of safety equipment and protective gear. We have also planned for isolated treatment facilities and possible measures to restrict school, work and mass activities during a pandemic.

The four lines of defense include "battles abroad, broader quarantine, health management in community and a sound health-care system."

The DOH is working vigorously with other countries to block any infection from spreading to Taiwan. We will continue with quarantine measures that have been put in place at airports and seaports after the SARS outbreak, such as thermal monitoring. Furthermore, we are building up consensus and marshaling manpower in the community for better health management. At the same time, we are constructing a health-care network for epidemic control.

In order to enhance cross-departmental collaboration and understanding of the standard procedures, the DOH has adopted the concept of military drills for disease-control mobilization. The DOH has devised a possible course of development for the flu epidemic and conducted a drill for a Level A2 pandemic situation (ie, suspected human infections of avian flu in Taiwan) on July 7 this year. The highly successful drill included devising operational strategies, quarantine of travelers from epidemic areas, investigation into the magnitude of the crisis and hospitalization of suspected cases.

I traveled to Washington recently where a flu pandemic was the focus of my discussions -- even the US did not have the confidence to declare that it was fully prepared for a pandemic. The US is willing to work with our government in preventing novel influenza.

After the dreadful experience of dealing with the SARS outbreak in Taiwan in 2003, the DOH is wary of a new pandemic and is determined to be a global leader in preparing for the crisis. We urge the public to trust the authorities, to pay attention to information released by the government and to follow the prescribed preventive measures.

On the whole, a pandemic caused by the novel influenza bacteria is likely to occur, even though we are unable to predict the exact time of its occurrence.

However, through analysis of data that are currently available, the number of novel influenza infections in both humans and animals are on the rise. Researchers have also discovered incidents of mass outbreak and suspected human-to-human transmission. As a result, most experts believe that the novel-influenza strain H5N1 is undergoing continuous changes and is becoming more flexible in adapting to the human body. Consequently, they believe the next pandemic is just around the corner.

Such a pandemic will bring unprecedented disruption to the economic and social security systems as well as health care services, even causing them to shut down or disintegrate. We are at a critical point in history to respond to a pandemic. We are running against time in our preparation for the looming crisis. The health authorities alone cannot accomplish the mission, and even cross-departmental collaboration cannot reverse the tide. Only with public consensus and support for government regulations and guidelines can we can minimize losses in what threatens to be the pandemic of the century.

Hou Sheng-mou is the minister of the Department of Health.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edi...8/16/2003267959

 

[Kim99]

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1260&storyid=3621798

Australia well prepared to fight bird flu - Abbott


August 16, 2005

AUSTRALIA is as well prepared as any other country to fight a potential bird flu pandemic, Health Minister Tony Abbott says.


Mr Abbott today repeated warnings that it was impossible to predict whether the virus would spread to Australia.

But he said the government had spent millions of dollars to ensure the country was well prepared.


"We cannot tell if or when there will be a pandemic flu outbreak," Mr Abbott said.


"But according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Australia is as well prepared as any other country to meet this potential public health disaster.


Well, if WHO says it, it must be true Aren't they the ones that said the bird flu would "peter out" in Russia?

 

[HangingDog]

Quote:

"But according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Australia is as well prepared as any other country to meet this potential public health disaster.


This is not what you might call a stellar commendation. If no other country is prepared (as the WHO has been saying) then zero prep essentially equals the above statement.

That is like saying I plan to give every TB member up to $20.

If the gift turns out to be zero (as I envision it) then it still meets the above qualifications.

 

[Martin]

Flu pandemic could trigger second Great Depression, brokerage warns clients at 17:24 on August 16, 2005, EST.

TORONTO (CP) - A major Canadian brokerage firm has added its voice to those warning of the potential global impact of an influenza pandemic, suggesting it could trigger a crisis similar to that of the Great Depression.


Real estate values would be slashed, bankruptcies would soar and the insurance industry would be decimated, a newly released investor guide on avian influenza warns clients of BMO Nesbitt Burns.

"It's quite analogous to the Great Depression in many ways, although obviously caused by very different reasons," co-author Sherry Cooper, chief economist of the firm and executive vice-president of the BMO Financial Group, said in an interview Tuesday.

"We won't have 30-per-cent unemployment because frankly, many people will die. And there will be excess demand for labour and yet, at the same time, it will absolutely crunch the economy worldwide."

A leading voice for pandemic preparedness said the report is evidence the financial and business sectors - which have been slow to twig to the implications of a flu pandemic - are finally realizing why public health and infectious disease experts have been sounding the alarm.

"I think that this particular report really signifies the first time that anyone from within the financial world, when looking at this issue, kind of had one of those 'Oh my God' moments," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

"The financial world is finally waking up to the fact that this could be the boulder in the gear of the global economy," he said, suggesting a pandemic could trigger an implosion of international trade unlike anything seen in modern history.

"All the other catastrophes we've had in the world in recent years at the very most put screen doors on our borders. This would seal shut a six-inch steel door," Osterholm said.

Cooper, a highly influential figure in the Canadian financial sector, wrote the report with Donald Coxe, a global portfolio strategist for BMO Financial Group.

They warn investors the economic fallout out of a pandemic would inflict pain across sectors and around the globe.

Airlines would be grounded, transport of goods would cease, the tourism and hospitality sectors would evaporate and the impact on exports would be devastating, Cooper wrote.

"This would trigger foreclosures and bankruptcies, credit restrictions and financial panic," she warned, suggesting investors reduce debt and risk in their portfolios to be on the safe side.

The World Health Organization and public health leaders have been warning for some time that the world may be on the verge of a pandemic, the first since 1968. Adding considerably to their concern is the fact that the strain they fear will trigger a pandemic, the H5N1 avian flu ravaging poultry flocks of Southeast Asia, is highly virulent.

Even if a pandemic were mild, it is estimated that about a third of the world's population would fall sick over a period of months and millions would die. If the strain is virulent, the toll could mount to scores of millions of deaths, over a period of only 18 to 24 months.

Cooper reminded investors of the economic devastation SARS wreaked on affected cities or countries, including Toronto. But even with that fresh experience to draw from, she admitted it was hard to envisage how widespread the implications of a flu pandemic might be.

"It is a big, big issue. I mean, it's almost imponderable," she said. "I have to admit: the more research I did, the more frightened I became."

Still, she urged investors to embrace prudence, not succumb to panic.

"We wouldn't want everyone to go running out and dump all their investments and bury cash in their mattresses, because it would only accelerate the crisis - at least the financial crisis. But I don't believe people would do that anyway," Cooper said.



http://www.940news.com/nouvelles.php?cat=22&id=81690

 

[Martin]

H5N1 Wild Bird Flu Reaches Caspian Sea?

Recombinomics Commentary
August 16, 2005

The Russian government's consumer rights watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, expressed fears on Tuesday that the bird flu virus, which has hit the Urals and parts of Siberia, has reached Kalmykia, as domesticated birds have reportedly died on a Kalmyk farm.

The above comments on concerns that H5N1 wild bird flu has already reached Kalmyk in Europe, supports an AFP report from last week commenting on reports of bird flu at the Volga Delta, which is between Kalmyk and Kazahkstan (see map).

If the above reports are confirmed, the leading edge of the H5N1 in the Urals / northeast Kazahkstan region would be significantly advanced, Birds that travel this path were expected to eventually reach this region just west of the Caspian Sea, but these latest reports suggest the H5N1 has already arrived. Sightings between these points and the leading edge are anticipated, which would bring H5N1 into areas in Europe and Asia where it has never been reported.

Since the trail of dead migratory birds has gone from Qinghai Lake to Xinjiang to Novosibirsk, to the Urals and now to the Caspian Sea, there is little doubt that the H5N1 will spread throughout the Black, Caspian, and Mediterranian Seas region and on to the Middle East and North Africa.

The H5N1 wild bird flu has evolved away from the H5N1 in Vietnam, and the current pandemic vaccine being developed worldwide will probably have little effect. Clinical trials are scheduled to begin next month in Russia and Hungary, but in the United States the titer was low against the 2004 H5N1 immunizing strain and there have been no announced plans to initiate a vaccine program targeting the H5N1 wild bird strain.

The rapid spread of the H5N1 ahead of the migration period, which is just beginning for many species at Qinghai Lake and Novosibirsk, suggest this strain will continue to spread in Asia, where it has already appeared in Mongolia and Tibet.

The dramatic increase in the H5N1 range will increase the likelihood of a recombination that will increase the efficiency of human-to-human transmission. Although the strain appears to be sensitive to anti-virals amantadine and rimantadine, the initiation of a serious vaccine effort is long overdue.

The current program of targeting one H5N1 isolate is destined to fail, and the lack of a serious vaccine effort remains scandalous and hazardous to the world's health.

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/08160502/H5N1_Caspian_Sea.html

 

[Bill P]

The part below about the similarities between SARS and EBOLA coupled with the recent outbreaks of both in China lends some credibility IMO to the possibility that these are not naturally occuring virii, but man made in a China Bio Lab.

Source: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050814171056.htm


Date: 2005-08-16

Penn Researchers Discover Key To How SARS Virus Infects Cells
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that inhibitors of an enzyme called cathepsin L prevent the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus from entering target cells. SARS is caused by an emergent coronavirus. There is no effective treatment at this time.

A proposed model of how SARS coronavirus enters the host cell. To gain entry, the virus binds to receptors on the cell surface as is taken up into a vesicle (endocytosis). Cathepsin L proteases facilitate fusion of the viral membrane and the vesicle membrane. Credit: Graham Simmons, PhD and Paul Bates, PhD (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine)

This study also demonstrates a new mechanism for how viral proteins are activated within host cells, states senior author Paul Bates, PhD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology. Bates and first author Graham Simmons, PhD, Research Associate, also in the Department of Microbiology, published their findings in the early August issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To gain entry, a virus binds to receptors on the surface of the host cell, and is taken up into a vesicle, or sphere, inside the cell. (Click on thumbnail to view full-size images). Unlike most known viruses, the SARS coronavirus (like the Ebola virus) needs one more step to infect the cell. The proteins within the membrane of both SARS and Ebola need to be cut by special cellular enzymes (cathepsins) in order to replicate within the host cell. Cathepsins act in the low pH (acidic) environment inside the vesicle, facilitating fusion of the viral membrane and the vesicle membrane, so that viral proteins and nucleic acids can enter the cell where viral replication occurs.

“This paper changes the thinking of the field,” says Bates. “Up to this point, everyone thought all of the activation steps were at the cell surface or due to the low pH environment in the vesicle. Our paper shows that it’s not just low pH, but the cathepsin proteases in the vesicles that clip the viral protein. This gives us a new target to address in the development of therapeutics against the SARS virus.”

The researchers found that several chemical inhibitors of cathepsin activity blocked infection of human cell lines by the SARS virus, which were grown in a high-level safety laboratory. In general, these findings, say the researchers, have led to a better understanding that the cutting of viral protein by cathepsins is necessary for infectivity and is likely not unique because both the SARS and Ebola viruses are now known to use a similar mechanism to invade their host cells. (In June 2005, a group from Harvard School of Medicine discovered that the Ebola viral membrane protein is similarly activated by cathepsin L and B.)

If these proteases are important for other viruses, they represent a new way to stop viral infection. SARS and Ebola are the first examples of the need for these proteins to be cleaved during infection of the host cell.

This work is a joint collaboration between the Bates lab and the research group led by Scott L. Diamond, PhD, Director of the Penn Center for Molecular Discovery, one of nine facilities that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is establishing as part of the Molecular Library Screening Center Network. Diamond is also Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering within the Institute for Medicine and Engineering at Penn. While independently screening for inhibitors, Diamond’s lab found a cathepsin L inhibitor called MDL28170, which Bates and Simmons tested for efficacy in inhibiting SARS coronavirus infection. The cellular cathepsin enzymes have many other roles within the body, including mediating the inflammatory immune response in the lungs and antigen processing in T cells.

The Bates research group, in collaboration with the Diamond group, has identified a few compounds, including MDL28170, which they plan to test in animals for SARS inhibition. “We’re now searching for other viruses that also use this cleaving mechanism for activating their proteins,” says Bates. “If there are a number of other viruses that do that, and we have some preliminary evidence to suggest this, then we can develop small molecule inhibitors as possible therapeutics.” One advantage of this approach is that oral medications made from small-molecule inhibitors are more readily made and distributed in the developing world-as opposed to a vaccine, suggests Bates. Protease inhibitors active against cathepsins have been tested in mice with no ill side effects, which bodes well for their eventual testing in humans.

Co-authors are Dhaval N. Gosalia, Andrew J. Rennekamp, and Jacqueline D. Reeves, all from Penn. This study was funded by NIH and the NIH Mid-Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases.


Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here.

 

[Martin]

Sedgwick County, Kan., Is Ready for Pandemic
Aug. 15--If the deadly avian flu strikes Kansas, Sedgwick County officials say they will be prepared.

As part of their pandemic prevention plan, more than 60 distribution centers would open in the county to give out vaccines and face masks, said Claudia Blackburn, the county's health director. Most centers would be converted schools, health care facilities and businesses.

With health officials saying it is a question of when, not if, a global outbreak involving a new strain of flu will occur, concern is growing. Some people have questioned whether Kansas is prepared.

At a public hearing on Sedgwick County's 2006 budget earlier this month, Wichita resident James Mendenhall asked whether the county was adequately prepared for an avian flu pandemic -- a global outbreak that would spread rapidly from person to person.

The county does have more than $8 million of contingency reserve funds, but none of it is earmarked for emergency services.

The state health department also is revising its pandemic plan, which will be released to the public for the first time later this month.

The concern surrounding the avian flu is justified, said Gail Hansen, an epidemiologist with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

"All of the sudden, we're hearing about more and more cases from different parts of the world," Hansen said.

The state leaves it up to each county to develop specific plans for education and distribution of medicine in their communities.

"There's been concern for a long time that we're overdue for a pandemic, but I can't predict when it's going to happen," said Claudia Blackburn, Sedgwick County's health director. "Our job is to be ready when it does."

Blackburn said there are quarantine laws that health officials can use to stop the spread of a deadly disease.

Under extreme circumstances, she said, the county has the authority to "limit public gatherings."

Avian flu is a deadlier version of the more common, seasonal influenza.

Scientists say they have found a vaccine that may protect against avian flu, but it needs further testing and won't be available until mid-September.

Public health experts warn that there is a strong possibility the virus could mutate so that it is easily transmitted between humans. For now the disease is mostly transmitted through birds.

Kansas health experts say they expect, and plan for, another pandemic, but don't know when or where that might happen. Or even if it will come from the avian flu.

The last flu pandemic was in the late 1960s, when 34,000 people died in the United States because of Hong Kong flu.

Hansen said it's impossible to perfectly plan for a large-scale flu outbreak because so many questions -- where and when and how -- are unanswered.

"We plan as much as we can in the face of very little data," Hansen said. "We don't know where it's going to pop up, and don't know if it's going to be avian influenza. But are we watching that? Oh, sure. We're watching it very closely."

If a flu pandemic strikes Kansas, the state would be in charge of securing vaccines and doling them out to counties. State officials also will serve as coordinators for counties and cities. Trained state officials could also be dispatched to help all over the state.

Public health emergencies can breed chaos, and having a plan that is easy and quick to activate is important, Hansen said.

"We don't want a plan that sounds wonderful but nobody can do," she said.

The first instance of a human infected with the avian flu was in Hong Kong in 1997. This was the first time that the virus was transmitted from poultry to humans; six people died.

So far, there have been outbreaks in America, mostly among poultry. In Texas in 2004, 7,000 chickens were infected.

And in New York in 2003, a man was diagnosed with the disease. Health officials are still trying to determine how he got it.

Hansen said it's still the commonsense, simple advice that will prevent a flu pandemic from hitting Kansas: Wash your hands, stay home when you're sick, cough and sneeze into a tissue, she said.

-----

To see more of The Wichita Eagle, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.kansas.com.



http://www.rednova.com/news/health/208839/sedgwick_county_kan_is_ready_for_pandemic/

 

[Kim99]

Mass bird deaths found in European Russian region

Wed Aug 17, 2005 12:41 PM BST

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/new..._01_KWA734099_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BIRDFLU-RUSSIA.xml

By Maria Golovnina

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is investigating mass bird deaths in a region to the west of the Ural mountains in what could become the first case of the deadly bird flu virus spreading to Europe, officials said on Wednesday.

But Russia's chief animal health official said a preliminary analysis had shown the deaths in Kalmykia may not have been caused by the dangerous virus that can also kill humans.

The Russian state health watchdog, in a statement posted on its Web site, said the bird deaths occurred on a farm in the Caspian region of Kalmykia -- 2,000 km (1,200 miles) from the region where Russia's first flu outbreak was reported.

"This case is being investigated," the Federal Consumers' Rights and Welfare Watchdog said, adding no cases among humans had been confirmed in Russia.

Russia has fought to contain a bird flu outbreak since mid-July when the first case of the disease was registered in Siberia and later in neighbouring Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

The Agriculture Ministry said in a statement health and emergency officials had culled 113,000 birds in all affected regions -- from Novosibirsk to Kurgan -- to stop the disease from spreading.

Officials fear migrating birds could export the virus to Western Europe, Africa and the Middle East over coming months.

The H5N1 subtype of bird flu, confirmed in Kazakhstan and a number of Siberian regions, has killed more than 50 people in Asia since 2003.

There was no final word on what had caused the Kalmyk deaths but Sergei Dankvert, chief animal and plant safety officer, said the birds may have died from an infection caused by parasitic worms.

"The result of a preliminary analysis has not confirmed the existence of bird flu in the village of Manych ... in the republic," he told Itar-Tass news agency.

Kalmykia is 1,800 km south of Moscow and is the only Buddhist region in Europe. Russia is one of the world's biggest poultry importers.

DUCKS FOUND DEAD

Separately, Interfax news agency reported that health officials were looking into mass deaths of ducks near a reservoir in the Sverdlovsk region which borders a number of Urals regions hit by the virus.

In Kazakhstan, the Emergencies Ministry said the death of more than 120 birds in a northern village was due to avian influenza, the sixth location in the country where a bird flu outbreak has been recorded.

The prospect of its spreading has prompted warnings that the virus might mutate in humans and unleash a global influenza pandemic that could kill millions.

A message from the U.S. embassy to Americans in Kazakhstan this week said the U.S. State Department was stockpiling an anti-viral medication, Tamiflu, to treat U.S. government employees and their families at its embassies in southeast Asia.

 

[Kim99]

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/08170502/H5N1_Sverlovsk.html

H5N1 Wild Bird Flu Spread to Sverlovsk Russia?

Recombinomics Commentary
August 17, 2005

Separately, Interfax news agency reported that health officials were looking into mass deaths of ducks near a reservoir in the Sverdlovsk region which borders a number of Urals regions hit by the virus.

The above report suggest H5N1 wild bird flu may be forming a northern route targeting northern and western Europe. The leading edge of he route along the southern border of Siberia and northern border of Kazakhstan has begun to turn south, with new reports near the Urals in Chelyabinsk, Russia and Talapker, North Kazakhstan. H5N1 in Sverdlovsk would point toward a more northern route.

The southern route to the Caspian Sea is supported by unconfirmed reports in Kalmykia and the Volga Delta. Migration to these areas is expected, but the unconfirmed results would indicate the advance is more rapid than anticipated.

Similarly, one media report indicates bird flu has been confirmed in Kursk. If accurate, the movement of H5N1 into northern and western Europe would be virtually certain.

The confirmed reports clearly show a rapid migration to the west (see map) ahead of the time when most birds migrate out of Siberia. These confirmations anticipate a major increase of H5N1 into areas where it had not been reported previously.

The unconfirmed reports indicate the coverage of Europe will be extensive, increasing the likelihood of efficient human-to-human transmission. Although countries in Europe have been developing a pandemic vaccine, it is directed against a Vietnamese strain from 2004 and will not likely be effective against the wild bird flu strain rapidly spreading through Europe and Asia.

 

[Kim99]

Internal WHO plan urges stockpiling antiviral drug for staff and dependants

Helen Branswell ,Canadian Press

August 17, 2005

TORONTO (CP) - The World Health Organization's internal pandemic flu plan urges its offices around the world to stockpile enough of the antiviral drug oseltamivir to treat nearly a third of staff and their dependants - a guideline that may be adopted by other UN agencies as well.

The recommendation is contained in a leaked pandemic contingency plan described as "an internal working document" by an agency spokesperson. Its goal is to both ensure the safety of WHO workers and the agency's ability to maintain operations at a point when its guidance may be more desperately needed than ever in its history.

"We've been urging countries to move ahead with their pandemic preparedness plans - and that's exactly what we're doing," Dick Thompson, communications director of the division of communicable diseases, said from Geneva.

Thompson admitted the agency has been struggling to figure out how it could continue to function at a time when a tidal wave of illness and death would be washing over the globe. It is estimated that when a pandemic next occurs, about a third of the world's population could become ill.

"We've been thinking about that for months. What happens if 30 per cent of our staff is down? How do we function? We have to prepare," Thompson said.

The WHO contingency plan may become an outline for pandemic plans for all UN agencies, though he would not comment on whether that means all UN agencies will be urged to stockpile enough of the scarce drug to treat 30 per cent of staff and dependants.

"We're providing a template, as we provided to countries, so they (the UN) can make these decisions."

Thompson deferred questions on the UN's intentions to the WHO's office at the United Nations; that office did not return calls on the report on Wednesday.

He also refused to comment on details of the plan, insisting it was a draft meant for internal use only at this stage.

The report notes WHO has a "duty of care" for its roughly 8,000 active staff (plus dependants) and 3,000 local contract employees around the world.

It discusses options such as potentially purchasing vaccine against a pandemic strain in advance of need and relocating some staff to their country of origin once a pandemic strikes.

The plan warns global stocks of oseltamivir - sold as Tamiflu - would be rapidly exhausted when a pandemic is declared. It urges WHO offices to have a basic stockpile large enough to treat roughly 30 per cent of staff and dependants, should they fall ill.

It notes the 30 per cent figure should be considered "guidance only."

"Some countries may choose to stockpile more, but should be aware that it may become difficult to reserve these excess stores for only the use of UN personnel and families during a severe community-wide outbreak."

"Because antivirals will become valuable commodities during a pandemic they should be stored in a secure place."

It notes WHO headquarters in Geneva is initially stockpiling 1,000 treatment courses of the drug "to cope with additional emergency needs."

Thompson could not say whether the WHO will purchase these stockpiles, or will draw them from stores of drug donated by the drug's sole manufacturer, Swiss drug maker Hoffman-La Roche.

"I don't know where these stocks will come from. That may be left up to the country and regional offices," he said.

The WHO currently has a stockpile of about 125,000 treatment courses of oseltamivir and is in negotiations with Roche to take possession of an additional amount, estimated at about one million treatment courses.

Much of that drug is expected to be donated to SouthEast Asian countries hard hit by the H5N1 avian flu strain experts fear may be posed to trigger the first pandemic of the 21st century.

http://www.canada.com/health/story.html?id=780966fa-fcd5-4691-902a-73ddd71e2efa

 

[Kim99]

This article is long so I'll only post part of it~

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Has Time Run Out? The Coming Avian Flu Pandemic

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/08/has_time_run_out.html

By Mike Davis

Deadly avian flu is on the wing.

The first bar-headed geese have already arrived at their wintering grounds near the Cauvery River in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Over the next ten weeks, 100,000 more geese, gulls, and cormorants will leave their summer home at Lake Qinghai in western China, headed for India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and, eventually, Australia.

An unknown number of these beautiful migrating birds will carry H5N1, the avian flu subtype that has killed 61 people in Southeast Asia and which the World Health Organization (WHO) fears is on the verge of mutating into a pandemic form like that which killed 50 to 100 million people in the fall of 1918. As the birds arrive in the wetlands of South Asia, they will excrete the virus into the water where it risks spreading to migrating waterfowl from Europe as well as to domestic poultry. In the worst-case scenario, this will bring avian flu to the doorstep of the dense slums of Dhaka, Kolkata, Karachi, and Mumbai.

The avian flu outbreak at Lake Qinghai was first identified by Chinese wildlife officials at the end of April. Initially it was confined to a small islet in the huge salt lake, where geese suddenly began to act spasmodically, then to collapse and die. By mid-May it had spread through the lake's entire avian population, killing thousands of birds. An ornithologist called it "the biggest and most extensively mortal avian influenza event ever seen in wild birds."

Chinese scientists, meanwhile, were horrified by the virulence of the new strain: when mice were infected they died even quicker than when injected with "genotype Z," the fearsome H5N1 variant currently killing farmers and their children in Vietnam.

Yi Guan, leader of a famed team of avian flu researchers who have been fighting the pandemic menace since 1997, complained to the British Guardian in July about the lackadaisical response of Chinese authorities to the unprecedented biological conflagration at Lake Qinghai.

"They have taken almost no action to control this outbreak. They should have asked for international support. These birds will go to India and Bangladesh and there they will meet birds that come from Europe." Yi Guan called for the creation of an international task force to monitor the wild bird pandemic, as well as the relaxation of rules that prevent the free movement of foreign scientists to outbreak zones in China.

In a paper published in the British science magazine Nature, Yi Guan and his associates also revealed that the Lake Qinghai strain was related to officially unreported recent outbreaks of H5N1 among birds in southern China. This would not be the first time that Chinese authorities have been charged with covering up an outbreak. They also lied about the nature and extent of the 2003 SARS epidemic, which originated in Guangdong but quickly spread to 25 other countries. As in the case of SARS' whistleblowers, the Chinese bureaucracy is now trying to gag avian-flu scientists, shutting down one of Yi Guan's laboratories at Shantou University and arming the conservative Agriculture Ministry with new powers over research.

Meanwhile, as anxious Indian scientists monitor bird sanctuaries throughout the subcontinent, H5N1 has spread to the outskirts of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet; to western Mongolia; and, most disturbingly, to chickens and wildfowl near the Siberian capital of Novosibirsk.

Despite frantic efforts to cull local poultry, Russian Health Ministry experts have expressed pessimism that the outbreak can be contained on the Asian side of the Urals. Siberian wildfowl migrate every fall to the Black Sea and southern Europe; another flyway leads from Siberia to Alaska and Canada.

In anticipation of this next, and perhaps inevitable, stage in the world journey of avian flu, poultry populations are being tracked in Moscow; Alaskan scientists are studying birds migrating across the Bering Straits, and even the Swiss are looking over their shoulders at the tufted ducks and pochards arriving from Eurasia.

H5N1's human epicenter is also expanding: in mid-July Indonesian authorities confirmed that a father and his two young daughters had died of avian flu in a wealthy suburb of Jakarta. Disturbingly, the family had no known contact with poultry and near panic ensued in the neighborhood as the press speculated about possible human-to-human transmission.

At the same time, five new outbreaks among poultry were reported in Thailand, dealing a terrible blow to the nation's extensive and highly-publicized campaign to eradicate the disease. Meanwhile, as Vietnamese officials renewed their appeal for more international aid, H5N1 was claiming new victims in the country that remains of chief concern to the WHO.....................

The new U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt told the Associated Press in early August that an influenza pandemic was now an "absolute certainty," echoing repeated warnings from the World Health Organization that it was "inevitable." Likewise Science magazine observed that expert opinion held the odds of a global outbreak as "100 percent."

In the same grim spirit, the British press revealed that officials were scouring the country for suitable sites for mass mortuaries, based on official fears that avian flu could kill as many as 700,000 Britons. The Blair government is already conducting emergency simulations of a pandemic outbreak ("Operation Arctic Sea") and is reported to have readied "Cobra" -- a cabinet-level working group that coordinates government responses to national emergencies like the recent London bombings from a secret war room in Whitehall -- to deal with an avian flu crisis.

Little of this Churchillian resolve is apparent in Washington. Although a sense of extreme urgency is evident in the National Institutes of Health where the czar for pandemic planning, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warns of "the mother of all emerging infections," the White House has seemed even less perturbed by migrating plagues than by wanton carnage in Iraq. .............

 

[Kim99]

Aug 17 2005 2:54PM
Experts: Bird flu outbreak can be contained no earlier than October

http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/exclusive/29.html?mode=9&title_style=exclus&others=2&id_issue=11364360

MOSCOW. Aug 17 (Interfax) - Russian experts have expressed their opinions on the reasons for the current outbreak of bird flu in the country and the time need to contain it in interviews with Interfax.

A Russian veterinary oversight official said that bird flu will not be contained in infected territories until the middle of October.

"We must remain on the alert until 21 days after all wild birds have migrated to places of hibernation. Only then, in the middle of October, will we be able to say that bird flu has been contained in all of the infected territories," Nikolai Vlasov, deputy head of the Federal Veterinary Service's oversight department, told Interfax.

"Bird flu outbreaks in domestic poultry reflect processes occurring in nature. We are witnessing a global process which has involved the whole of Asia and will soon cover other territories," Vlasov said.

"All birds migrating along the Central Asian routes have been infected, and there is no way to stop the epidemic," the expert said.

"Natural hotbeds of the disease have been spotted in the Novosibirsk region, but the virus can be taken to new places under various circumstances. One must also take the periodicity of the phenomenon into account," he said.

Vlasov said the first stage in the epidemic was passed when wild ducks hatched their young, which spread the infection. "The movement of birds from the north and their preparations for long-distance migration marked the second stage," he said.

The bird flu virus is spreading in Russia mainly due to inappropriate conditions in which poultry are kept, said Russian Bird Protection Union Vice President Pavel Tomkovich.

"Everybody has gotten scared and is trying to shift the blame on wild birds, which I believe is absolutely wrong. In my view, everything depends on how you keep poultry," Tomkovich, who is also chief of the ornithology sector of the Moscow Lomonosov State University's Zoological Museum, told Interfax.

Poultry has been infected by the bird flu virus because poultry farms cannot prevent contacts with wild birds, he said.

"In theory, there should be no contact between poultry and wild birds, and the managers should think about how to prevent such contacts. Wild birds have always carried agents of various diseases and no measures can eradicate this," Tomkovich said.

No human cases of bird flu have been reported in Russia and intensive measures are being taken to prevent the disease from infecting people, the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a release on Wednesday.

"The H5N1 strain is potentially dangerous to humans," the ministry said.

Since July 21, migrating birds carrying the bird flu virus have infected domestic poultry in the Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tyumen, Kurgan and Chelyabinsk regions and the Altai territory, the release says.

"According to updated reports, 13,724 head of domestic poultry have died since July 21and 397 have died over the past 24 hours. As many as 112,128 head of poultry have been slaughtered since July 21 and 7,352 over the past 24 hours," the ministry said.

More than 700 people and about 250 pieces of equipment are involved in the work to prevent the spread of the epidemic, the ministry said.

 

[Kim99]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5081701260.html

washingtonpost.com
Experts Discuss Possible Bird Flu Spread

By EMMA ROSS
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 17, 2005; 3:12 PM

LONDON -- As bird flu marches west across Russia toward Europe, health experts expressed optimism Wednesday that European countries could stamp it out before the virus takes hold and spreads among people.

"Will this make its way to Western Europe? I think most of us have no doubt," said Michael Osterholm, an expert on bird flu and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota in the United States.

But he and other experts say that while the situation is worrisome, Europe is better equipped than Southeast Asia to quickly attack the disease that scientists fear could unleash a pandemic.

The scenario of a bird flu outbreak in Europe would be very different from that in Asia, said Juan Lubroth, an animal health expert with the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, one of the agencies responsible for tracking the virus.

It would not only be detected more quickly, he said, but people don't live in close quarters with animals, as they do in much of southeast Asia.

The European poultry industry also is better able to shelter its birds from contact with the wild ducks blamed for the disease's spread. Italy and the Netherlands have previously stamped out outbreaks of bird flu.

Also, experts noted the health care system is better able to deal with human exposure to bird flu and other animal-produced diseases.

"Theoretically, because it's going to be stopped in its tracks, it's not going to infect humans because of the quick detection, and therefore it would have less of a chance to become adapted to humans," Lubroth said.

On Wednesday, Russian veterinary workers incinerated thousands of birds in an intensified effort to stop the epidemic spreading across the Ural Mountains, which lie about 750 miles east of Moscow and divide the Asian part of Russia from the European side.

The Russian epidemic, first registered in western Siberia in July, has been blamed on two kinds of wild ducks _ mallard and pochard _ migrating from Southeast Asia, ministry spokesman Sergei Vlasov said.

The country's public health chief warned this week that the virus could reach the Black Sea and Caspian Sea regions later this year _ and from there move to the Middle East and Mediterranean, and speed through European Russia by spring.

The danger to the European poultry industry could be substantial. The larger worry is that the virus could mutate into a form that is both deadly to humans and easily spread between people. Most flu pandemics originate from bird flu viruses. While the virus currently ravaging poultry in Asia has killed people there, it has not spread among them.

However, Osterholm noted that each time the virus passes from one bird to another presents another opportunity for it to mutate.

"This is genetic roulette," he said. "Every bit of spread just adds that much more potential for a mutation to occur that results in a strain that would be more readily transmitted between humans."

Scientists are monitoring the migratory bird pathways that cross from Siberia, over Western Europe to Africa.

A network of bird watchers and ornithologists, working for Dutch virologist Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus University in the Netherlands, is collecting swabs and fecal samples from wild birds weekly for scientists to analyze for traces of bird flu. The H5N1 strain ravaging poultry in Asia has not shown up in samples so far.

On Osterhaus' advice, the Netherlands on Wednesday ordered commercial poultry farmers to bring their birds indoors, just in case.

© 2005 The Associated Press

 

[O2BNOK]

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/08170504/H5N1_Kursk.html


Commentary
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H5N1 Wild Bird Flu Spreads to Kursk in Western Russia?

Recombinomics Commentary
August 17, 2005

According to the Ministry's report for today makes about 11,300 poultry heads dead of the bird flu in Russia. Now the Ministry has received confirmation of the epidemic in Kursk Oblast.

The above comments indicate the H5N1 wild bird flu has moved to the western edge of Russia (see map). However, the major jump has not been widely reported. If true it seems that H5N1 will spread throughout Europe this fall. Some had speculated that the migration this fall would only affect more southern regions of Europe such as the Caspian and Black Seas, as well as the Mediterranean.

However, H5N1 has been reported in many species and several migratory paths overlap in Europe, so if some or most inflected flocks can transport and transmit H5N1, the widespread infections would be expected.

The path from Qinghai Lake to Xinjiang Province, to Chany Lake to the Ural Mountains demonstrates that migratory birds can easily and quickly transport and transmit H5N1 over long distance, raising the distinct possibility that soon H5N1 will be distributed worldwide.



May = red
June = orange
July = yellow
Aug = green



xoxo