New government website for emergency preparedness

I had not seen this website until today. Hope it is helpful to some of you. Looks good to me.
Ready.gov It has a section for pet owners planning.

Cats with flu study from Emerging Infectious Diseases

Volume 12, Number 8–August 2006

Letter

Qinghai-like H5N1 from Domestic Cats, Northern Iraq

Samuel L. Yingst,* Magdi D. Saad,* and Stephen A. Felt*
*US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3, Cairo, Egypt

Acknowledgments

We thank Elham Botrus Shabo, Saman Najeeb, Faisal Polus, Sura Jabar, Saidawan Omer Yussif, and Burhan Sulaiman for facilitation and technical assistance in sampling and performing necropsies, and Bradford Camp, Odis Kendrick, and Kosar Shaheer for communications and security.

This work was supported by funding through the Naval Medical Research Center work unit GEIS E0018.

Study about duck hunters risk for bird flu

Volume 12, Number 8–August 2006

Dispatch

Avian Influenza among Waterfowl Hunters and Wildlife Professionals

James S. Gill,* Richard Webby,† Mary J.R. Gilchrist,* and Gregory C. Gray‡
*University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory, Iowa City, Iowa, USA; †St Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, USA; and ‡University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

The Study

In mid-October 2004, we enrolled 39 duck hunters who were hunting in southeastern Iowa at Lake Odessa Wildlife Management Area, the state's only limited-access public waterfowl hunting area managed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR). In February 2005 we enrolled 68 Iowa DNR employees, many of whom had duck hunted or had been involved annually in capturing and banding wild ducks and geese as part of their duties of employment. Ten (15%) of the 68 DNR workers reported no contact with ducks. The duck-hunting group consisted of men >16 years of age, and the DNR group consisted of 65 men and 3 women enrollees. The average age of the duck hunters and DNR workers was 34 and 47 years, respectively. The average number of years of waterfowl or bird exposure of the duck hunters and DNR workers was 19.8 and 21.5, respectively. In the 3 years before the study, influenza vaccine had been administered to 37% of the duck hunters and 35% of the DNR workers.

Microneutralization assay, adapted per Rowe et al. (5), was performed on all serum samples with influenza A subtypes H1 through H12 from avian sources. Virus at 100 TCID₅₀ (50% tissue culture infective dose)/50 μL was incubated at 37°C for 2 h with heat-inactivated serum in 96-well plates. One hundred microliters of trypsinized London MDCK cells at 2 × 10⁵ cells/mL, grown to 70%–95% confluency, was added to each well. After 24 h at 37°C, the cells were acetone-fixed, and horseradish peroxidase–based ELISA was performed with mouse-specific anti-influenza A antibody. Optical density was read at 450 nm. All tested virus isolates were titrated with and without trypsin in the University of Iowa's Emerging Pathogens Laboratory; no significant difference in titers was observed. Backtiter controls were performed with each microneutralization assay.

Hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assay with horse erythrocytes, adapted per Meijer et al. (6), was performed on all hunter serum samples by using avian influenza A subtype H11. Heat-inactivated serum treated with receptor-destroying enzyme was first heme-adsorbed with packed horse erythrocytes. Serum was then incubated with virus at 8 hemagglutinin U/50 μL with 1% horse erythrocytes in 0.5% bovine serum albumin in phosphate-buffered saline for 1 h at room temperature in V-bottom plates. The plates were then examined.

One 39-year-old duck hunter had a titer of 40, and 2 male DNR workers, ages 52 and 53, had titers of 10 against influenza A/H11N9/duck/Memphis/546/76 by microneutralization assay (Table). These 3 study participants had substantial lifetime exposures to wild waterfowl. The duck hunter and the 2 DNR workers had 31, 27, and 30 years of duck-hunting experience, respectively. The duck hunter spent 25–60 days in the marsh each year hunting ducks. He harvested 100 ducks annually and handled another 300 ducks with his hunting partners during the duck-hunting season from mid-September to early December. One of the positive DNR workers (age 52) had several years of live wild duck–banding exposure as part of his annual duties of employment, in addition to 27 years of duck-hunting exposure. Each year this wildlife professional had contact with >100 live ducks during the banding season in late August and early September. Serum samples from all other study participants were negative against subtype H11N9 according to results of microneutralization assay and horse erythrocyte HI assays. The duck hunter's serum was not reactive to any other avian influenza hemagglutinin subtypes tested (H1–H10 and H12). The sera of the 2 H11-positive DNR workers had titers of 10 for influenza A/H2N2/mallard/NY/6750/78 according to microneutralization assay results and were negative for H1, H3–H10, and H12. Results of the H11 microneutralization assay were verified by horse erythrocyte HI assay that used subtype H11N9 virus. The titers by horse HI assay of the microneutralization assay–positive duck hunter and the 2 DNR workers were 10 or 20 (Table). These 3 study participants had not been vaccinated against influenza within 3 years before the study.

Conclusions

Virus transmission from wild waterfowl to humans has not been documented. To our knowledge this study is the first to assess hunters with substantial exposures to wild ducks and geese, the known natural reservoir of influenza A virus in nature (1). During late August and early September in Iowa, when the banding of wild ducks occurs, and in mid-September, when duck hunting begins, a significant proportion of hatch-year mallards (up to 65%) and other ducks may be infected with influenza A virus according to other studies in North America (1,7). Later in the season, as the duck migration progresses, a decrease in prevalence is commonly seen (1,8). In late August 2004, we isolated influenza virus from mallards (60%) and from wood ducks (13%) in Iowa (data not shown).

Even though the H11-positive study participants had several years of exposure to wild birds infected with avian influenza virus through hunting and duck banding, they did not wear personal protective equipment, such as gloves, masks, or eye protection. These participants also did not use tobacco, a recently identified risk factor among swine facility workers with elevated serum antibodies against swine strains of influenza (9).

In this study we did not attempt to associate disease symptoms with exposure to wild waterfowl. Others have shown that domestic bird–acquired influenza A/H7N7 in humans may frequently lead to minor illness, such as conjunctivitis (4,10,11), although more serious disease has been recorded (4,10). We provide serologic evidence from 2 assays, microneutralization assay and horse erythrocyte HI, for past infection in humans with avian influenza A/H11 and no other avian influenza subtypes. Our findings are consistent with those of Beare and Webster (12), who reported a lack of antibody response in human volunteers inoculated with avian influenza strains with HA antigens wholly alien to humans. Those researchers did not inoculate volunteers with H11. In our study, a less common hemagglutinin subtype (H11) has apparently caused serologically detectable infections in high-exposure groups, whereas the more common hemagglutinin subtypes H4 and H6 (13–15) in wild ducks have not. The reason for this finding is unknown but may include the following: 1) H11 may have increased ability to infect humans, 2) H11 may provoke a relatively strong and detectable immune response, and 3) our serologic assays may be more sensitive in detecting H11 infection than other H subtypes.

Even though none of the H11-positive study participants had received influenza vaccine within the previous 3 years, the 2 positive DNR workers also showed reactivity by microneutralization assay to avian subtype H2N2. This result was not unexpected and likely represents reactivity from natural infection of the human H2N2 strain derived from avian sources that circulated from 1957 to 1967. Forty-one percent of participants of similar age (range 43–68 years, average 56 years) who grew up during the era of the human H2N2 pandemic also had positive test results. Except for the 2 H11N9-positive DNR workers, the other H2N2-positive study participants were nonreactive against avian subtype H11N9 (data not shown). This finding strengthens our conclusion that there was no cross-reactivity between H2N2 and H11N9 antisera. None of H11-positive study participants was reactive to avian subtypes H1 or H3, although others in the study population were. Only 7% and 18% of the study population were reactive by microneutralization assay against H1 and H3, respectively.

The relative lack of antibody response in our study population, who had substantial exposures to waterfowl with influenza A infections, and in inoculated volunteers from Beare and Webster (12) suggests that avian influenza infections in humans exposed to wild waterfowl may occur more commonly than we are able to detect with current methods. Although the sample size of our study was relatively small, our results suggest that handling wild waterfowl, especially ducks, is a risk factor for direct transmission of avian influenza virus to humans.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dale Garner, Bill Ohde, Guy Zenner, and other employees of the Iowa DNR for their assistance; the duck hunters who participated in this project; Sharon Setterquist, Mark Lebeck, Kelly Lesher, and Mohammad Ghazi for their technical assistance; and all volunteers who assisted with blood collecting.

This work was supported by grants from the University of Iowa Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination funds and the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID-R21 AI059214-01).

Dr Gill, in addition to providing emergency room duties as a physician, maintains an active research program as the zoonotic disease specialist at the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory. He recently codiscovered a new species of spotted fever group rickettsia and relapsing fever borrelia in the bat tick, Carios kelleyi. He also holds an adjunct position in the Department of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa.

References

CIDRAP REPORTS

In other developments, a man in Vietnam who was hospitalized with possible avian flu tested negative yesterday, according to news services. The patient is from the southern province of Kien Giang, on the Cambodian border in the Mekong Delta. Vietnam hasn't had a confirmed human H5N1 case since November 2005.

Three people in Thailand have also been cleared of H5N1 infection, according to the Bangkok Post. One is a 9-year-old girl from Lop Buri province in central Thailand who died 2 days ago. The other two patients—a 17-year-old boy and a 42-year-old woman—are from Chachoengsao province, east of Bangkok. The tests indicated that all three patients had a type A flu virus, but not H5N1, the newspaper said.

As of yesterday, the Thai Health Ministry reported that 97 patients from 24 provinces were under surveillance for possible avian flu. Those numbers were down from 164 patients in 21 provinces the previous day.

Thailand's only confirmed human H5N1 case this year was in a 17-year-old boy from Phichit province who died of the disease Jul 24. A report in the Aug 3 Eurosurveillance Weekly suggests that the boy's death indicates that poultry deaths in Thailand are being underreported. The authors observe that poultry deaths in the country were not reported until Jul 24, the day the boy died.

The boy's case may be an example of a "sentinel human," meaning a human H5N1 case that triggers reporting of the disease in poultry, the report says.

See also:

Eurosurveillance Weekly report on avian influenza in Thailand
http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ew/2006/060803.asp#1

Smuggling poultry with potential H5N1

Vietnam

Poultry smuggling boomed after Vietnamese started slaughtering about 50 million chickens to contain bird flu epidemic

By Alan Sipress

WASHINGTON POST

DONG DANG, Vietnam - The smugglers first appeared on the distant ridgeline and then, like ants, streamed down a dirt track carved from the lush mountains that separate Vietnam from China. As the figures grew closer, their stooped posture became visible, backs heaving under bamboo cages crammed with live chickens.

On the road below, two young men identified by local officials as lookouts buzzed past on red dirt bikes, slowing down to check out a reporter and his government escorts who had stopped to watch. One man produced a two-way radio and started speaking urgently. Although his words were inaudible to the visitors, within moments the figures on the hillside melted into the brush.

These traffickers haul more than 1,000 contraband chickens a day into Lang Son, one of six Vietnamese provinces along the Chinese border, flouting a chicken import ban. In doing so, health experts say, they have also repeatedly smuggled the highly lethal bird flu virus from its source in southern China into Vietnam, where the disease has taken a devastating toll on farm birds and killed at least 42 people since 2003.

As bird flu continues to spread across the Eastern Hemisphere, international health experts warn that illegal trade in poultry, poultry products and other birds is often the primary cause.

"Both between and within countries, commerce is an incredibly important factor," said Juan Lubroth, chief of infectious animal disease for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. "We try to press with governments that it has to be controlled or managed better. But like trafficking in humans, weapons and drugs, with poultry it's not any easier."

The virus has already ravaged farm birds and wildfowl in more than 50 countries. At least 230 human cases have been recorded, and more than half have been fatal. Health officials fear that a new form of the virus that can jump easily from person to person will develop, bringing on a global epidemic among humans.

Vietnamese veterinary officials disclosed in April that they had found bird flu in a sample taken from smuggled chickens confiscated in Lang Son during a bust on the border. Days later, officials in the remote, neighboring province of Cao Bang reported the virus in poultry samples taken from three farms on the Chinese border after dozens of chickens had started dying and smuggling was suspected. These two episodes were the first official cases of bird flu in Vietnam since December.

In May 2005, researchers had already found evidence that smuggling was bringing in the bug: They isolated a strain of the H5N1 virus that was new to Vietnam but similar to one common in China's Guangxi province, just over the mountains from Lang Son.

Lang Son's jagged border with China runs for about 150 miles through angular, misty mountains with craggy cliffs that seem drawn from a stylized painting. The highest peak, which lends its name, Mau Son, to the local rice wine, rises nearly 4,500 feet. For centuries, the extended families straddling this border have navigated treacherous footpaths to run goods from one side to the other, in recent years including electronics, DVDs, exotic wildlife and all nature of clothes and shoes.

The bootleg poultry business turned lucrative two years ago after Vietnam started slaughtering about 50 million chickens to contain its bird flu epidemic. The resulting shortage of chicken meat, a prime source of protein for the Vietnamese, sent prices soaring on their side of the border.

Much of this trade takes place at night. But in the broad daylight of a recent afternoon, more than a dozen smugglers were descending a steep earthen track outside the border village of Dong Dang. Even after the motorbike lookouts apparently sounded the alarm, more traffickers appeared over the ridge from China. Others were spotted walking down another, narrower path largely concealed by trees about 100 yards away.

The local officials warned that the smugglers could turn violent, attacking outsiders with stones or firearms. According to Vietnamese press reports, chicken smugglers in Lang Son have battled soldiers trying to intercept them. In one instance, five soldiers were injured by stones, and their car was destroyed.

Do Van Duoc, director of animal health in Lang Son, explained that the huge difference in prices on opposite sides of the border makes for a flourishing business despite the ban on poultry imports from China. Prices fluctuate, but on average, chicken that sells for 30 cents per pound or less in China can fetch a dollar or more in Vietnam.

Duoc said the high cost of poultry in Vietnam also reflects the expense of importing vaccines and other medicine to combat bird flu. Chinese farmers are able to keep costs down because of the vast scale of their poultry industry and the inexpensive supply of feed and domestically produced vaccines, he said.

Moreover, Duoc alleged that Chinese farmers unload chickens from areas struck by bird flu at bargain prices. In some cases, he said, the farmers tell Chinese authorities they have culled their flocks to earn government compensation and then peddle the birds to smugglers.

"They try to get as much money as they can," he said. "They are selling sick chickens because of the outbreak."

China's Agriculture Ministry confirmed that poultry was being illegally transported from Guangxi into Vietnam. In response to written questions, ministry officials said that an investigation by Guangxi animal health investigators had discovered smuggling from three areas close to Lang Son province but that there were no reports of this poultry being infected with bird flu.

Chinese agriculture officials said government veterinarians were working with customs and border defense officers to stop the illicit trade. Chinese police have confiscated more than 23,000 chickens and 3,500 ducks this year, officials said.

The syndicates running the smuggling rings pay local villagers about 30 cents a bird to haul the contraband along mountain trails that in some cases snake for more than 10 miles, said Nguyen Thang Loi, director of market inspections in Lang Son. Some smugglers, especially women and children, can carry only a few birds, but fit men haul as many as 20 at a time.

The traffickers are finding new ways to move even larger amounts. In recent weeks, Loi's inspectors captured a pair of makeshift wooden carts that were being used to transport as much as a ton of chickens at a time along railroad tracks running through the mountains.

Once the smugglers descend the slopes, their haul is often moved by motorbike to local farms that serve as stopover points, Loi reported. From there, the chickens are loaded onto trucks for transport, in many cases to the markets of Hanoi and points farther south, Loi and animal health experts said.

An average of up to 1,500 birds are slipped over the mountains into Lang Son each day, Loi reported. Along the entire Vietnam-China border, the total could be thousands more, according to Vietnamese and international livestock experts.

Worldwide, the trade in illegal poultry and other birds is extensive, said Lubroth of the U.N. agriculture agency, though the specific scope is unknown.

This business includes large-scale commercial shipments of uninspected meat, often from China, to destinations as diverse as Europe, Africa and the United States. Last month, U.S. inspectors discovered 2,000 pounds of frozen chicken, duck and geese smuggled from China in a Detroit-area warehouse that supplies Chinese restaurants and Asian groceries in Michigan.

Last year, Taiwanese officials reported their first case of the deadly bird flu virus among more than 1,000 birds that were being smuggled by ship from China. A pair of eagles confiscated two years ago at Brussels International Airport in Belgium from the hand luggage of a Thai passenger were found to be carrying the disease.

In Africa, commerce spread the virus from Egypt to Sudan and likely took it to other countries on the continent, Lubroth said.

In Lang Son, Loi said he has only 22 inspectors at the border to stem the smuggling of everything from batteries to automobiles. Despite repeated arrests, he acknowledged that the organizers remain at large. "The real smugglers are behind the scenes, and even the people hired to carry don't know the names or have any information about them," Loi said.

Thai's report death from H5N1

Thailand confirms second bird flu death this year :: latest

A 27-year-old man has died of bird flu, becoming the second person this year to be killed by the disease in Thailand, a Health Ministry official said today.

Dr Thawat Suntrajarn, chief of the Department of Communicable Disease Control, said the man came from Uthai Thani province in the country’s north.

“I can confirm the man tested positive for the H5N1 virus,” Thawat said, referring to results of tests carried out in Thailand.

Another Health Ministry official, who demanded anonymity, said the man died on Thursday. The official said the man had buried sick chickens and also ate birds that had died of the virus.

At least 134 people have died worldwide since the disease began spreading in Asia in late 2003, according to the World Health Organisation, including 15 in Thailand.

The WHO has not yet confirmed the latest death in Thailand.

In the past two weeks, Thailand has confirmed two outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry and recorded its first human fatalities from the disease in eight months.

News of the new outbreaks triggered increased concern about the disease, and hundreds of people who earlier had bird flu-like symptoms but were cleared after testing were being checked again.

Health officials also have said that a special committee will be created in Nakhon Phanom where one of the outbreaks occurred to assist health agencies and the province will receive equipment for rapid testing of suspected cases. Authorities will also do more to educate people about the disease, and volunteers in every village will look for symptoms among their neighbours.

Who knows what is going on in Indonesia?

Test results negative in suspected bird flu patients

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Medan

Preliminary laboratory tests of six suspected bird flu cases in North Sumatra were negative for the virus, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said Thursday.

"The tests came back negative. We didn't find H5N1 in their specimens," she said of results from three government-accredited laboratories in Jakarta.

"They have common influenza."

She also said the government would now rely on the local laboratories for H5N1 testing, instead of the current practice of sending samples to a WHO-sanctioned facility overseas.

The six people were from Kabanjahe district, Karo regency, which was the site of a eight-member cluster in May, the world's largest.

She cautioned that the results were tentative because they were tested when they were showing bird flu-like symptoms, including fever and respiratory difficulties.

"Hopefully it will stay negative," she said, adding that a second test was being carried out.

The people were found during surveillance conducted by the local administration after the detection of H5N1-infected chickens in Sumbul village. It is only five kilometers from Tiga Panah district, where the world's largest bird flu cluster found in May.

The WHO has said limited human-to-human transmission probably occurred in that cluster, but the government has consistently said the virus genotype indicated it was from infected poultry.

Although most of the country's 43 human deaths have been traced to contact with sick birds, experts fear that the virus could mutate into a form easily transmittable among humans, sparking a global pandemic with the potential to kill millions.

Siti also said that beginning Thursday the government would no longer send samples to a WHO-sanctioned lab in Hong Kong because she considered local laboratories were sufficiently qualified.

She referred to a lab owned by her office's research and development department, an Eijkman Institute laboratory and the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit-2 laboratory, all based in the capital.

However, the government will continue to send specimens for research purposes to one of the WHO-sanctioned labs around the world.

In North Sumatra, the National Commission on Bird Flu established Thursday a coordinating post in Karo, with its main task to contain H5N1 from spreading to other areas.

Rizal Mallarangeng, an expert staff to Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare and commission chief Aburizal Bakrie, will head the post.

"We estimate that the post will be in operation for the next six months," Rizal told The Jakarta Post.

He said he was formulating strategies with the local administration to promote awareness and involvement of the local people.

The head of Karo regency's livestock agency, Shidarta Pinem, said one of the undertakings would be to monitor the poultry cull currently underway.

The agency's data showed that as of Thursday, 12,800 birds had been culled. The government has promised to provide compensation from Rp 10,000 to Rp 12,500 for each culled fowl.

Karo regent D.D. Sinulingga also announced the issuance of a decree banning people or businesses from transporting poultry and fertilizers in or out of the regency.

Thai concerns about reporting of H5N1

Thai Bird Flu Case Suggests Under-Reporting in Fowl (Update1)

Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- A 17-year-man who died of bird flu in Thailand last week, the country's first case this year, suggests the virus is being under-reported in poultry, the influenza team at the European Centre for Disease Surveillance and Control said.

The youth from a northern province was hospitalized on July 18 suffering fever, cough and headache and died six days later, the Thai Bureau of General Communicable Diseases said in a July 26 report. A week before his symptoms appeared he buried 10 dead chickens, touching the carcasses with his bare hands. His phlegm tested positive for the H5N1 avian flu strain.

The case ``could be an example of the phenomenon of a sentinel human already seen in other countries, where it is only the severe illness or death of a person from H5N1 that triggers detection or reporting of H5N1 in poultry,'' the team in Stockholm said in a report. ``This suggests under-detection or under-reporting of poultry deaths.''

Thailand widened the search for avian flu patients and improved surveillance for the virus in poultry as a result of the death of the youth. New cases create chances for H5N1 to mutate into a pandemic form and world health authorities are tracking the disease for signs it's becoming more contagious.

The virus is known to have infected 232 people in 10 countries, killing 134 of them. Most infections occurred in Asia through contact with birds. The disease may kill millions should it start spreading easily between people, researchers have said.

Respiratory Symptoms

Thailand is awaiting laboratory tests on 259 people with respiratory symptoms, of whom 32 are from Phichit, the same province where the teenager died last week, the country's Bureau of General Communicable Diseases said on its Web site today.

So far this year, Thai health authorities have investigated more than 2,300 clinical influenza or pneumonia patients as part of routine surveillance. Only one of these has been found to be infected with H5N1.

Thai health officials recorded 65,100 cases of seasonal influenza in the first seven months of this year. Of those patients, 370 died, Thawat Suntrajarn, director general of the health ministry's disease control department, told reporters in the capital, Bangkok, today.

``Our biggest concern is the outbreak of seasonal flu in Pichit, where the bird flu virus is still active'' in poultry, and in nearby provinces, Thawat said. The initial symptoms of both avian and seasonal influenza are similar, he said.

Health officials are concerned that people may contract H5N1 flu while they're infected with seasonal influenza. The dual infections might allow the H5N1 to mutate into a pandemic form, Thawat said.

`Very Lethal'

``Bird flu is very lethal with a high fatality rate among infected patients, while seasonal flu is easily transmitted between humans,'' he said. ``Any combination of both viruses in a person would be very dangerous.''

Laboratory tests on a 9-year-old girl, who died earlier this week in Lop Buri province, showed she had seasonal flu, not the H5N1 strain, Paijit Warachit, director general of Thailand's Medical Science Department, said in a telephone interview today.

Tests on two suspected avian flu patients in Chachoengsao also showed they have seasonal flu and not H5N1, Thawat said.

Concern of fresh outbreaks of the disease have been fanned by reports of new infections in poultry. Laos, Thailand's northeastern neighbor, said the virus killed thousands of poultry in several farms owned by a commercial producer near the capital, Vientiane, last month.

``There remains a constant risk of outbreak reoccurrence'' because of the large numbers of free-range poultry that haven't previously been exposed to the virus, and the movement and mixing of fighting cocks, the influenza team at the ECD said in its report.

Wild Birds

``There is also the additional risk from wild birds mixing with the free-grazing birds,'' the team said. The report was published yesterday in Eurosurveillance, an online journal of peer-reviewed information on communicable diseases.

In Vietnam's Kien Giang province on the Cambodian border in the Mekong Delta, a man was hospitalized with damaged lungs and high fever about a week after eating duck, the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported yesterday.

Tests on the man were negative for H5N1, said Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, director of the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City.

The Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper reported today that he virus was found in storks in the Suoi Tien district of Ho Chi Minh City, and in ducks from two flocks in the southern province of Tay Ninh.

Tests on the duck flocks were negative for the H5 avian flu subtype, said Nguyen Xuan Binh, deputy head of the Ho Chi Minh City regional center for animal health, which is responsible for carrying out tests on animal samples from southern provinces.

``We have just received samples from the stork flock in Suoi Tien today, and tests are underway,'' Binh said.

A swan found dead in Dresden zoo in eastern Germany was infected with H5N1, the first such infection in the country in almost three months, Agence France-Presse said yesterday, citing local authorities.

To contact the reporters for this story:
Jason Gale in Singapore at  j.gale@bloomberg.net;
Anuchit Nguyen in Bangkok at at anguyen@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 4, 2006 06:10 EDT

Storks in Germany with H5N1

BERLIN, Aug 4 (Xinhua) -- A swan found dead at Dresden Zoo in eastern Germany was infected with H5N1 bird flu virus, German media reported on Friday.

The Saxon state health ministry said all the birds at the zoo had been confined as a precaution.

The new case was the first in Germany since April, when the virus was detected among domestic poultry.

In February, Germany witnessed an outbreak of bird flu among wild birds.

In June, the German parliament extended to next February a lock-up order for domestic poultry in those areas with a high risk of bird flu. Enditem

Vietnamese storks and H5N1

HANOI, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Preliminary tests on wild storks at a theme park in Ho Chi Minh City showed the birds might be infected with an avian influenza virus, a Vietnamese official said on Friday. Huynh Huu Loi, director of the city's Animal Health Department, said more tests were being done to see if they had the H5N1 virus which has killed 42 people in Vietnam since 2003 but has not resurfaced for nearly eight months. "We have yet to look deep enough into the H5 component of bird flu virus, but the first results found the storks have influenza type A," said Loi, adding that park officials had been asked to destroy 53 storks. H5N1 is an influenza type-A virus which has killed 42 people in Vietnam since late 2003, although there have been no confirmed human infections this year. A 35-year-old man hospitalised this week in the southern province of Kien Giang tested negative for the disease, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said. "Vietnam retains its status of having no reported case in poultry or humans during 2006," said Laurence Gleeson, a senior FAO official and bird flu expert in Bangkok. Gleeson was sent to Laos this week to assess its surveillance efforts after bird flu was found last month on a farm south of the capital Vientiane, its first outbreak since 2004. He said there was no sign of further outbreaks as authorities began surveying a five-kilometre area around the farm on Friday. A poultry cull within a one kilometre (mile) zone was completed on Thursday. The latest outbreaks in Laos and Thailand, where bird flu killed a teenager in late July, fanned fears that the virus known to have killed 134 people worldwide was flaring up again in Asia. Vietnamese officials say a failure to control waterfowl, which can be silent carriers of bird flu, made the country vulnerable to new outbreaks and wild birds believed to carry H5N1 would soon migrate from the north, raising the risk of infection. Wild birds are natural hosts of bird flu viruses and often don't show symptoms but can pass the viruses to poultry. H5N1 can kill chickens within 24 hours of infection. The FAO has urged governments to be vigilant against a virus still circulating in poultry three years after it swept across much of Asia.

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Indonesia's troubles

Indon. holding up bird flu data



Related Articles NZ broiler poultry flocks free of flu NZ told to up the ante in flu fight Backyard flocks to go under microscope

Aug 2, 2006

A Chirstchurch virologist says international research on bird flu virus is being hampered by Indonesia's refusal to allow public access to information about the disease.

Indonesia has the highest number of confirmed human deaths from the H5N1 strain - along with Vietnam - with 42 deaths in each country.

Indonesia has also had the largest confirmed cluster of cases, with seven people from one family dying in May, after probable human-to-human spread of the virus. And human infections in Indonesia are increasing, with about one a week on average.

A consultant for the World Health Organisation, Lance Jennings, says Indonesia is not sending many samples of the virus to UN laboratories, or letting university and private scientists access the information. He says the clinical material is needed to understand how the virus is mutating.

Jennings says international health regulations that come into effect next year will help improve access to viral data.

Source: RNZ

Shuttlecocks

BIRD FLU: AN UNEXPECTED VICTIM

Wednesday, August 02, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com

One unexpected side effect of the worldwide panic over avian flu: poorer quality in badminton equipment. According to a Los Angeles Times article, regular players of the tennis-analog sport have noticed "a change in the shuttlecocks" over recent months, with thinner feathers and faster deterioration of the materials.

The diagnosis: different types of bird-feathers are being used for the cocks. One adherent of the game is quoted as saying, "It was goose feather, but now it feels almost like duck." In addition to the slow but steady rise in deaths, illness, and poultry-slaughterings, bird flu seems to be "smashing the world of badminton," says the article. The slaughter of millions of geese suspected of possible H5N1 virus infection has created a serious feather shortage in the badminton world.

Moreover, in addition to the shortage, the prices have risen nearly 25 percent in just the last few months. A spokesman for Pacific Sports Private Ltd., a shuttlecocks vendor, reportedly acknowledged that a possible pandemic "would be a disaster." However, on more personal note he adds, "If bird flu becomes pandemic, shuttlecock prices could become twofold or threefold higher." - ST

Staff Reports - Free-Market News Network

Bird flu not so bad?

TLANTA, GA, United States (UPI) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it has decided the likelihood of an avian-flu virus pandemic is less than previously thought.

CDC scientists reached the conclusion after conducting a simulation of one of the two main ways the H5N1 virus might follow in adapting to humans. In that simulation the virus did not create a lethal version that could infect humans, The Wall Street Journal reported.

But scientists cautioned a pandemic might still occur with the avian flu virus evolving in a different manner.

The Atlanta-headquartered CDC experiment involved mixing the bird flu virus with a common human influenza virus. In an alternative transformation, the H5N1 virus might genetically mutate on its own, as it`s believed an avian flu virus did to cause the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed millions of people around the world, the Journal said.

CDC Director Julie Gerberding warned the experiment doesn`t mean there`s no danger of a pandemic. 'These data do not mean that H5N1 cannot convert to become transmissible,' she said, only that 'it is probably not a simple process.'

The CDC experiment is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

new goings on in Indonesia

Indonesia tests 7 for bird flu from same village

By Nadim Ladki

MEDAN, Indonesia (Reuters) - Seven Indonesians from the same village in North Sumatra have been hospitalised and are being tested for bird flu, an official said on Wednesday, raising fears of new cluster cases in the country.

The group comes from Karo district in North Sumatra province where bird flu killed as many as seven people in an extended family in May, triggering fears the H5N1 bird flu virus had mutated into a form that could spread easily between people.

"Whether it is a new cluster or not, that must be scientifically proved," said Runizar Ruesin, head of the bird flu information centre at Indonesia's health ministry.

He said the seven were admitted to the local Kaban Jahe hospital, with three referred to the state-run Adam Malik hospital.

The latter three are children -- two siblings aged 10 and six and their 18-month-old neighbour.

"I am still waiting for the result of the tests."

Another official said chickens in the area where they lived had died and tested positive for bird flu. Sick poultry is the usual mode of transmission of the disease, endemic in birds in about two-thirds of the country's provinces.

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