12/24 H5N1 | EU Braces for Spring OutBreak/US Sets Up Quarantine Areas

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<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>WHO says China has not shared enough information on bird flu</font>

December 24 2005
<A href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/185196/1/.html">Channlenewsasia.com</a></center>
BEIJING - The World Health Organisation on Friday urged China to share more data on bird flu outbreaks among poultry, saying it was crucial for the global fight against the deadly disease. </b>

Shigeru Omi, WHO regional director for the western pacific region, praised China's sharing of virus data on its human cases, but warned not enough information had been handed over about its poultry outbreaks.

Data on more than 30 reported outbreaks among domestic birds had not been shared this year, Omi said, although information about an outbreak among wild birds this year in western province Qinghai had been passed on.

"Human H5N1 viruses are only part of the story. To fully understand how this virus is evolving, we need viruses from outbreaks in animals," Omi told a press briefing.

"Ministry of Agriculture officials have told me they understand the importance of sharing viruses. But time is of the essence," he told the briefing at the end of his visit to China.

Last year, the agriculture ministry shared five virus isolates from outbreaks in animals, he said.

China's ministry of health has agreed to share virus isolates from two of its six reported human cases with the WHO and will also share virus sequence information for another two cases, said Julie Hall, a WHO expert on the virus.

She said the WHO has requested samples of viruses from animal outbreaks in Liaoning and Hunan provinces, where human cases have also been found.

Asked whether China has grossly under-reported its bird flu cases, Omi said China was not deliberately hiding cases. But a lack of surveillance and awareness in the country's vast rural community was to blame for a lack of quick and efficient reporting on the virus.

"The ability to spot animal outbreaks and possible human cases at the grassroots level is a major challenge," he said.

"Despite the intention, the infrastructure is not enough," he said.

"Of the six confirmed human cases so far, five were not forewarned by reports of poultry outbreaks in the local community."

Omi said China must focus on strengthening health resources and training in the countryside, where bird flu hits hardest.

This is particularly crucial in light of rapid and constant mutation of viruses, he said.

"One of the biggest concerns is a pandemic," he said. "We'd like to immediately identified whether ... viruses have mutated, then we can alert the international community promptly.

"If you miss the timing, the virus may be spread all over the world."

China last week confirmed its sixth human case of bird flu in east China's Jiangxi province and announced its 31st outbreak this year among poultry.

The nation's chief veterinary officer, Jia Youling, told reporters last week the "primitive management" of many backyard farms made prevention of outbreaks difficult.

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<B><center>23 December 2005

<font size=+0 color=brown>Human Death Toll from Deadly Bird Flu Strain Still Rising
Indonesia reports two more bird flu deaths, but no human contagion</font>

By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer
<A href="http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2005&m=December&x=20051223155605cmretrop0.997677&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html">usinto.state.gov.</a></center>
Washington -- The first cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza in humans occurred in December 2003, putting international health officials on notice that pandemic influenza could repeat history, sweep the world and cause millions of deaths.</b>

The threat is real in Indonesia, which reported two more deaths from the dangerous H5N1 flu strain to the World Health Organization (WHO) December 23.

Indonesia, one of five nations where this disease has made the leap from animals to humans, now counts 11 deaths from this flu strain. Vietnam has suffered the greatest human loss from bird flu with 42 dead. Cambodia, China and Thailand also have reported cases, with 73 deaths among the five nations, and a total of 141 human cases.

STILL NO EVIDENCE OF HUMAN-TO-HUMAN TRANSMISSION

Even though the first reports of human disease gave rise to warnings of pandemic influenza and the human toll has mounted, it appears that H5N1 still is not transmissible between humans.

Indonesian officials reported that they are keeping a close watch on the families and contacts of these latest disease victims to see if they too become infected. So far, two weeks after the first signs of illness in their now deceased loved ones, the family members have not shown signs of infection.

Their failure to contract the disease probably means the viral strain has not yet mutated to become a pathogen passed easily from person to person. If H5N1 develops that capability, then a pandemic becomes likely because of the lack of human immunity to this strain, which never infected humans before 1997.

In response to its mounting human toll, Indonesian authorities are beginning a campaign of house-to-house surveillance, according to news reports, on the look-out for sick poultry that could further spread infection among humans.

In Indonesia and many other Asian nations, keeping backyard poultry is common. Health officials say this practice is a significant factor in the human spread of the disease. The close proximity of birds to people also raises the likelihood that H5N1 will mutate and become a virus easily passed among humans.

PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS

The first reports of human disease officially were documented by WHO in January 2004. The numbers began mounting rapidly, tripling over the next two months. Only one year after outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Asia, international health officials were keenly aware of how rapidly infectious disease could travel the globe.

Health officials began educating their governments and the world community about the dire human, social and economic consequences of pandemic influenza. Nations around the world gradually have come to take the warning seriously, and are intensifying preparations for outbreaks of disease.

In October, the United States convened the first meeting of the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza with participation from almost 90 nations and all the major international organizations responsible for monitoring animal and human health. (See related article.)

The partnership is working to elevate the avian influenza issue on national agendas; coordinate efforts among donors and affected nations; mobilize resources; improve disease reporting and surveillance; and build local capacity to identify, contain and respond to an influenza pandemic.

In November, the Bush administration appealed to the Congress to provide more than $7 billion dollars in emergency funding to strengthen pandemic preparedness. The U.S. Senate favored at least that level of funding to increase stockpiles of anti-viral medications, improve the nation’s vaccine manufacturing capability and assist other nations in detecting and responding to disease outbreaks. (See related article.)

The U.S. House of Representative could not agree to a $7 billion preparedness plan at a time when budget cuts were being made elsewhere. Congress went into recess for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays having passed a bill with $3.8 billion devoted to pandemic preparedness. (See related article.)


(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Vietnamese teacher dies suspectedly of bird flu </font>

<A href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-12/23/content_3959665.htm">www.chinaview.cn </a>
2005-12-23 10:34:37 </center>
¡¡HANOI, Dec. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- A 36-year-old school teacher from Vietnam's southern Soc Trang province died after showing bird flu symptoms, local newspaper Labor reported Friday. </b>

The teacher named Ha Thanh Ut from Thanh Tri district died fivehours after being admitted to the Bac Lieu General Hospital in southern Bac Lieu province on Dec. 21. According to the hospital'sdoctors, he might have been infected with bird flu virus strain H5N1.

The man's family is raising some fighting cocks, the report said.

Vietnam's Health Ministry on Thursday confirmed 66 human cases of H5N1 infections, including 22 fatalities, in 25 cities and provinces since December 2004, bringing the total respective numbers in the country since December 2003 to 93 and 42.

To date, H5N1 found in three Vietnamese patients, all dead, has become resistant to bird flu medicine branded Tamiflu, local newspaper Youth on Friday quoted Peter Hobby, an expert of the World Health Organization, as saying.

Vietnam should research and then apply on a pilot basis a new bird flu treatment procedure: let patients take Tamiflu at a higher dose and in a longer time, he said, noting that the organization and Vietnam would conduct the trial early next year. Enditem

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<B><center>Storm Warning
<font size=+1 color=blue>How Avian Flu Could Decimate the Airline Industry</font>

<A href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/FlyingHigh/story?id=1318320&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312">abcnews.go.com</a></center>
Nov. 22, 2005 — Despite the wishful thinking of the feathered inmates in the movie "Chicken Run," chickens can't fly more than a few feet. Yet, in a way, chickens may now pose the biggest threat to those who do — the indispensable American public utility known as the airline industry.</b>

Asian chickens, to be exact, the ones infused with a percolating biological threat known as virus H5N1, or bird flu. Having essentially no previously developed natural resistance to the strain, our human species is extremely vulnerable to the nightmare of H5N1 mutating into an easily transmitted form of human flu, and the estimates of deaths from a potential worldwide pandemic are variable, but terrifying overall.

Fictionally Testing An Outbreak

A few years ago I personally created a really bad Level IV virus (aka pathogen) and put it on a 747 leaving Frankfurt just before Christmas to kick off one of my fiction stories in the book "Pandora's Clock." That virus (which, blessedly, was the construct of a fiction writer's application of science to possibility) doesn't exist, although hideous diseases with guaranteed death rates above 80 percent, such as the monstrous Ebola Zaire virus, do exist. The point of "Pandora's Clock" was that most developed nations have a deep and legitimate fear that when a real viral killer emerges somewhere in the world, the modern jet airliner will provide its ticket to attacking the mass of humanity within days, and we're nowhere near prepared.

It's not just Americans who have a bad habit of closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. Waiting until a crisis is upon us to prepare for it is a very human trait, especially acute in bureaucracies that thrive on order and predictability and can be easily overwhelmed when nature or circumstance goes off-script.

For jarring proof of this, we have only to point to FEMA's performance in the face of (and the wake of) Hurricane Katrina. But while even President Bush is legitimately worried about how to contain the terrifying possibility of a sudden outbreak of H5N1 in North America by just using a few excellent but already overburdened agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Pentagon, avian flu still has the potential to all but destroy the U.S. airline industry.


Avian Flu Would Ground Aircrafts

Plainly put, if a pandemic breaks out internationally, a staggering percentage of current international travelers will simply stop traveling and wait it out. But if a pandemic hits the United States or Canada, North American airports and airlines — the prime transmission points — will stand largely abandoned while authorities struggle with quarantines and containment. Bottom line: not even the perennially profitable Southwest Airlines can survive such a financial disaster for long.

The reality is that, like it or not, airline deregulation (enacted by a bipartisan Congress in 1978) has been one of the great disasters of the American Experience, and the proof of that is self-evident in the destruction of so many airlines and the current bankrupt status of United, Delta, and U.S. Airways. Even in Chapter 11, Delta, for instance, is hemorrhaging billions of dollars annually and eventually the well will run dry.

Why all this has happened is the topic for another column. The reality that even the strong among U.S. airlines are vulnerable to sudden spikes in fuel prices, let alone sudden abandonment of passengers, is essentially unquestioned.

Fleets of jetliners with price tags of between $40 million and $200 million each and costing literally millions per month even to lease cannot be left parked on the ramp for more than a few days before an airline financially melts down. After all, in the wake of 9/11, the losses among all U.S. airlines from spending several days on the ground and many weeks with partial loads of worried passengers amounted to enough money to worry Bill Gates (i.e., billions).

Even a government bailout program only plugged some of the holes in the financial hull of most carriers, and even with that help, the massive retardant effect of SARS the next year helped march the legacy carriers into bankruptcy court (and kept those already there in tenuous condition).

Hurt Airlines, Hurt the Economy

The impact of public abandonment of public transportation in the face of a spreading pandemic in our own back yard, however, would simply collapse the delicate financial structure of most carriers who depend on a river of cash coming in, as well as flowing out of, the door. Cut off the inflow and the rest of it dries up.

"So what?" the worst of the blind supporters of deregulation respond. If all the airlines collapse, others will rise in their place. In theory, of course. In fact, more than just passengers depend on the ability to get ourselves and our goods from Point A to Point B on demand. So does the economy. Again, the post-9/11 experience validates this.

The purpose of all this is not to frighten, but to raise a clarion call that among the other nightmarish elements we and our elected officials absolutely must carefully consider and plan for is the role of the airline industry as an indispensable part of American life (read: public utility), and we must prepare for what we'll do if the worst occurs.

The vermin who attacked us on 9/11 are betting we'll get it wrong.

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<B><center>Dec. 23, 2005
<font size=+1 color=purple>Europe braces for bigger bird flu outbreak this spring</font>

By Matthew Schofield
<A href="http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/world/13475721.htm">Knight Ridder Newspapers</a></center>
ISLE OF RIEMS, Germany - No one is worried about the traditional Christmas goose in Europe this year, but health officials are scrambling to prepare for what some believe is the certain arrival this spring of a deadly strain of bird flu in migrating wild birds. </b>

Europe first saw the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain this autumn, with cases discovered among dead wildfowl or small flocks of domestic birds in Croatia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. Experts are convinced that those cases are only a warning of what's to come.

Thomas Mettenleiter, the president of Germany's leading animal disease center, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, said millions of wild birds left Europe flu-free this autumn to winter in Africa. There they'll mix with migrating birds from Southeast Asia, where the lethal strain of the virus is far more common.

Of the ways the disease could arrive in Europe - through infected meat, live poultry or pets - migration is the most troubling. Government has no control over how many birds will arrive and where they'll land.

"March and April are going to be high alert times here," said Mettenleiter. "We've got a lot of work to do before then."

The European Union issued a directive Tuesday urging nations to deal aggressively with low-threat strains of the virus. Investigations should be launched whenever a suspicion of infection arises, it said.

Philip Tod, a spokesman for the EU Health and Consumer Protection Commission, said bird breeders should enclose their pens to limit contact with wild fowl and that signs of the flu should trigger mass culling in infected areas.

Reinhard Burger, the vice president of Germany's infectious disease center, the Robert Koch Institute, said that in the past Europeans could cull infected birds. "But we've never seen numbers approaching what we're expecting to see - hundreds of millions of infected birds will likely be returning to Europe with the spring weather.

"We're walking on a narrow ledge in high mountains this winter. We're very worried," he said.

The bird flu virus started killing birds in Southeast Asia in 2003. Farms with 10,000 birds were wiped out in 48 hours. Millions of birds died or were culled. Since then, the lethal virus has jumped to humans in 141 cases, resulting in 73 deaths, according to the World Health Organization on Friday.

As Mettenleiter explains: "We don't know if H5 strains can sustain a human pandemic, but if they can, the results are potentially catastrophic."

Humans have no immunity to new strains, and some experts estimate that a pandemic could kill more than 100 million people worldwide.

Currently, the flu passes from infected birds into humans through extended contact. But the virus is constantly mutating. A pandemic could start if it mutates into a form that easily transmits from human to human.

Most troubling is the possibility that humans who already have a human strain of flu will be infected. Flu has the ability to "gene-swap," or essentially trade genetic coding. So the H5N1 strain could turn a nonlethal strain that spreads easily among humans into a lethal one.

A vaccine would greatly decrease the number of deaths from bird flu, but a human vaccine isn't possible until the precise mutation that's passing among humans is known, and that hasn't developed yet.

There is a vaccine for birds. But it only would make them more resistant to flu, not stop them from spreading the disease, Mettenleiter said. "If the strain can jump to humans, that's the last thing we want. For now, at least, chickens are our sentinels."

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<B><center>Airport Workers On Lookout For Signs Of Bird Flu

<font size=+1 color=red>CDC: Quarantine Rooms Set Up In 18 U.S. Airports</font>
<A href="http://www.wral.com/health/5628048/detail.html">WRAL.com</a></center>
The holiday season is one of the busiest weeks for airports and security screeners. Terrorism is the biggest threat, but in the future, screeners may look for something -- the bird flu.</b>

Right now, the virus is known mostly to pass from birds to humans, but there have been some human to human transmissions, mostly in Asia. However, health experts are worried that if the strain mutates, it could spread more rapidly human to human.

One sick person on a plane could bring it to the United States, which is why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quarantine rooms at 18 major airports throughout the country.

Airline staff are now in training to spot the symptoms and call ahead to their landing site.

"What the airport would actually be used for is to process passengers, to evaluate those that are actually ill so we can appropriately isolate them," said Dr. Kiren Mitruka, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mitruka said the suspected passenger would be put into the isolation room, equipped with a bed, toilet and shower. Anyone else possibly infected could be quarantined as well.

"Of course, the key thing in that situation would be to monitor the health and safety of the well and give them appropriate and timely treatment," Mitruka said.

Airport health officers hope this is one flu they never have to cope with, but the government wants to be ready, just in case.

Quarantine inspectors also work with regulatory agencies to inspect imported animals and other cargo.

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<B><center>December 23, 2005
<A href="http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-bird-flu-flies-coop-/2005/dec/1237424.htm">www.tmcnet.com</a>

<font size=+1 color=brown>Bird flu flies the coop</font></center>

(New Scientist)THE deadly bird-flu virus H5N1 escaped the Asian henhouses this year and headed west. A massive outbreak of a distinctive strain among water birds at Qinghai Lake in China, and its subsequent spread along their migratory pathways as far as Turkey and Romania, meant its presence in wild birds could no longer be denied.</b>

The fear now is that migrant birds will carry the virus into Africa, where millions of vulnerable poultry live in close contact with people, many with immune systems impaired by tropical diseases, HIV and hunger. Could this prove to be the lethal mix that leads to large-scale human infection?

In Asia, human cases of H5N1 doubled this year compared with 2004. Three-quarters were in Vietnam, but for the first time cases were also reported in Indonesia and China. Fortunately, there are as yet no signs of the virus spreading readily among people, the necessary forerunner of a pandemic.

The arrival of the virus in Europe in late summer made western officials sit up and take notice, and a few vaccine trials finally got under way. The Bush administration asked Congress for $70 billion for pandemic defences, a level of spending unmatched by any other country and still not approved. The world's generic drug industry staked a claim to its rights under trade treaties to make the antiviral drug oseltamivir (better known as Tamiflu), whether the patent-holder, Roche, agreed or not. Roche bowed to the inevitable, and the first doses are now rolling off the production line.

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<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Border farm in bird flu scare</font>

From: By Jason Frenkel
December 24, 2005
<A href="http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17656326-29277,00.html">www.news.com.au</a></center>
A BACKYARD poultry farm just north of the Victorian border has been placed under quarantine following a bird flu scare.

The farm in Wentworth, NSW, near Mildura, was locked down late yesterday after inconclusive tests on a sick chicken. </b>

It is the first time authorities have isolated an Australian property since fears of a deadly bird flu pandemic emerged.

Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran said authorities were alerted to the scare when the chicken underwent routine tests for Marek's disease - a common poultry disease.

But the bird also showed weak reactions to a test for avian influenza.

Mr McGauran said tests had excluded the highly pathogenic AI (HPAI) form of bird flu, of which the deadly H5N1 is a strain.

Samples were sent to CSIRO laboratories late yesterday as a precautionary measure.
"I would stress that there is no food safety implications to consumers of poultry products arising from this incident," Mr McGauran said in a statement.

"While there is no evidence of any outbreak of avian influenza on this property, it has been placed under quarantine as a precautionary measure.

"This is consistent with Australia's conservative approach to managing animal health and disease risks," he said.

Investigators had visited the property and found no sick or dead birds in the flock.

Results from the tests were expected later today.

A spokeswoman for Mr McGauran said it was 99.9 per cent likely that the chickens did not have avian influenza or any strain of the virus.

"It is the remotest of possibilities that this is a case of avian influenza," she said.

The latest bird flu scare is the second in Australia in three months.

Inspectors in October quarantined a a shipment of 102 pigeons imported from Canada after it was found they had been exposed to the virus.

Three of the birds were destroyed. Mr McGauran said the farm scare proved Australia's surveillance systems were working well.

Just last month, officials from the nation's key agricultural and health agencies ran a simulated bird flu scare in a bid to test response systems.

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<B><font size=+1 color=blue><center>WHO official calls on China to release bird flu samplesM</font>

First posted 06:55pm (Mla time) Dec 23, 2005
By Alexa Olesen
<A href="http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=3&story_id=60908">Associated Press </a></center>
BEIJING--A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official appealed to China to hand over samples of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying Friday that Beijing has failed to release any samples from its dozens of outbreaks.</b>
Shigeru Omi, Asia-Pacific director for WHO, said sharing virus samples is crucial in developing a vaccine to prevent a possible human bird flu pandemic and diagnosing new cases. Speaking at a news conference, he said China was "key to the global war" against the disease.

Omi complained that Beijing has failed to share bird flu samples with his agency.

"From the more than 31 reported outbreaks in animals from 2005, no [Chinese] viruses have been made available so far for the international community," Omi said. "Time is of the essence."

Omi would not say why China has failed to share its bird flu samples.

But China could reap an economic windfall if it can create an effective bird flu vaccine or treatment before foreign competitors that might be helped by access to samples of its virus.

Jia Youling, director of the Chinese Agriculture Ministry's veterinary bureau, which has led China's anti-bird flu efforts, declined to respond to Omi's remarks. He referred questions to his ministry's press office, where phone calls weren't answered.

Omi contrasted China's behavior with that of Vietnam, which has made its own samples available to WHO scientists.

"If the pandemic starts due to the virus from Vietnam we are prepared," Omi said. "But if the pandemic emerges due to a virus circulating in China, we are not yet prepared for that."

China reported its sixth human case of bird flu last week and its 26th outbreak in poultry since Oct. 19.

China has had two confirmed human deaths from bird flu and a suspected case in a 12-year-old girl who died.

The H5N1 strain has killed at least 71 people in Asia since 2003.

Scientists have determined that the bird flu strains in Vietnam and Thailand resemble each other, while a second distinct strain has affected birds in China and Indonesia.

A potential third strain may have affected birds and sickened at least one human in Liaoning province in China's northeast, Omi said.

"Maybe in China there are two sub-strains, maybe more," Omi said. "We don't know."

Omi praised China for controlling and containing bird flu.

"The outcome of this battle in China has ramifications not only for the region but also for the entire world," he said. "China is truly key to the global war against H5N1."

China has mounted an aggressive campaign to fight bird flu, destroying millions of birds and mounting a campaign to vaccinate all of its 5.2 billion chickens, ducks and other poultry. The government says that effort is nearly complete.

However, Omi cautioned that vaccinations have only a 70- to 80-percent effectiveness rate and said that "vaccination is not a magic bullet."

"If you think vaccination alone will solve the issue, you are wrong," he said. He called on China to spend more money on disease education and surveillance in rural areas.

"The front lines of the battle against avian influenza are at the grass roots level," he said.

China has also established a network of officials throughout the country to raise awareness of bird flu symptoms and report on new cases.

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Bump for the night-side Tb'ers

bump

thanks dutch.

The Flying Dutchman said:

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<B><center>Storm Warning
<font size=+1 color=blue>How Avian Flu Could Decimate the Airline Industry</font>

<A href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/FlyingHigh/story?id=1318320&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312">abcnews.go.com</a></center>
Nov. 22, 2005 — Despite the wishful thinking of the feathered inmates in the movie "Chicken Run," chickens can't fly more than a few feet. Yet, in a way, chickens may now pose the biggest threat to those who do — the indispensable American public utility known as the airline industry.</b>

Asian chickens, to be exact, the ones infused with a percolating biological threat known as virus H5N1, or bird flu. Having essentially no previously developed natural resistance to the strain, our human species is extremely vulnerable to the nightmare of H5N1 mutating into an easily transmitted form of human flu, and the estimates of deaths from a potential worldwide pandemic are variable, but terrifying overall.

Fictionally Testing An Outbreak

A few years ago I personally created a really bad Level IV virus (aka pathogen) and put it on a 747 leaving Frankfurt just before Christmas to kick off one of my fiction stories in the book "Pandora's Clock." That virus (which, blessedly, was the construct of a fiction writer's application of science to possibility) doesn't exist, although hideous diseases with guaranteed death rates above 80 percent, such as the monstrous Ebola Zaire virus, do exist. The point of "Pandora's Clock" was that most developed nations have a deep and legitimate fear that when a real viral killer emerges somewhere in the world, the modern jet airliner will provide its ticket to attacking the mass of humanity within days, and we're nowhere near prepared.

It's not just Americans who have a bad habit of closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. Waiting until a crisis is upon us to prepare for it is a very human trait, especially acute in bureaucracies that thrive on order and predictability and can be easily overwhelmed when nature or circumstance goes off-script.

For jarring proof of this, we have only to point to FEMA's performance in the face of (and the wake of) Hurricane Katrina. But while even President Bush is legitimately worried about how to contain the terrifying possibility of a sudden outbreak of H5N1 in North America by just using a few excellent but already overburdened agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Pentagon, avian flu still has the potential to all but destroy the U.S. airline industry.


Avian Flu Would Ground Aircrafts

Plainly put, if a pandemic breaks out internationally, a staggering percentage of current international travelers will simply stop traveling and wait it out. But if a pandemic hits the United States or Canada, North American airports and airlines — the prime transmission points — will stand largely abandoned while authorities struggle with quarantines and containment. Bottom line: not even the perennially profitable Southwest Airlines can survive such a financial disaster for long.

The reality is that, like it or not, airline deregulation (enacted by a bipartisan Congress in 1978) has been one of the great disasters of the American Experience, and the proof of that is self-evident in the destruction of so many airlines and the current bankrupt status of United, Delta, and U.S. Airways. Even in Chapter 11, Delta, for instance, is hemorrhaging billions of dollars annually and eventually the well will run dry.

Why all this has happened is the topic for another column. The reality that even the strong among U.S. airlines are vulnerable to sudden spikes in fuel prices, let alone sudden abandonment of passengers, is essentially unquestioned.

Fleets of jetliners with price tags of between $40 million and $200 million each and costing literally millions per month even to lease cannot be left parked on the ramp for more than a few days before an airline financially melts down. After all, in the wake of 9/11, the losses among all U.S. airlines from spending several days on the ground and many weeks with partial loads of worried passengers amounted to enough money to worry Bill Gates (i.e., billions).

Even a government bailout program only plugged some of the holes in the financial hull of most carriers, and even with that help, the massive retardant effect of SARS the next year helped march the legacy carriers into bankruptcy court (and kept those already there in tenuous condition).

Hurt Airlines, Hurt the Economy

The impact of public abandonment of public transportation in the face of a spreading pandemic in our own back yard, however, would simply collapse the delicate financial structure of most carriers who depend on a river of cash coming in, as well as flowing out of, the door. Cut off the inflow and the rest of it dries up.

"So what?" the worst of the blind supporters of deregulation respond. If all the airlines collapse, others will rise in their place. In theory, of course. In fact, more than just passengers depend on the ability to get ourselves and our goods from Point A to Point B on demand. So does the economy. Again, the post-9/11 experience validates this.

The purpose of all this is not to frighten, but to raise a clarion call that among the other nightmarish elements we and our elected officials absolutely must carefully consider and plan for is the role of the airline industry as an indispensable part of American life (read: public utility), and we must prepare for what we'll do if the worst occurs.

The vermin who attacked us on 9/11 are betting we'll get it wrong.

Click to expand...

Maybe because it's so close to home, but this one gave me goosebumps when I read it..simply because I could so picture it..

bump

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<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>State hires bird flu pandemic consultant</font>

Saturday, December 24, 2005
<A href="http://www.pjstar.com/stories/122405/REG_B8GC4ROR.049.shtml">PJStar.com</a>
By Mary Massingale
Copley News Service</center>
SPRINGFIELD - The Illinois Department of Public Health has contracted with a Colorado consultant to develop emergency drills in preparation for the possibility of an avian flu pandemic.</b>

Moore Consulting of Boulder, Colo., has been hired using $75,000 of federal funds to develop and coordinate three exercises for state and local officials, according to Public Health spokeswoman Jennifer Williams.

"This will help bring us into compliance with federal guidelines," Williams said.

Williams said the consultant has developed similar drills for Maryland, North Dakota, Minnesota and New York City.

The first two exercises will both take place during late February or early March, Williams said. The first drill will involve officials from Public Health and the Illinois Department of Agriculture and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, as well as representatives of local health departments. The second exercise will involve representatives of local hospitals and law enforcement agencies.

The final exercise will occur in April and will act as a "dry run" of an avian flu outbreak for all involved parties, Williams said.

"We'll be testing our plan for what could happen if a pandemic occurs," she said.

Public Health in October also revised its pandemic influenza preparedness and response plan. The 82-page document outlines a framework for federal, state and local officials to work together in case of any pandemic.

Seasonal epidemics of common influenza cause an average of 30,000 deaths each year. Worldwide influenza pandemics have occurred three times in the 20th century - in 1918, 1957 and 1968 - and were caused by a major genetic change in the influenza A virus.

The avian influenza virus is carried by wildfowl worldwide but does not usually make those birds sick. However, the virus is very contagious among birds and can infect domesticated birds such as chickens, ducks and turkeys. A human if who ate uncooked fowl that is infected could possibly acquire the virus. The virus then would stop with that person, since it cannot be spread from human to human, much like the West Nile virus.

Scientists and researchers, however, fear that a certain subtype of the avian influenza virus could mutate into a virus that could be transmitted between humans.

President George W. Bush asked Congress to spend $7.1 billion to stockpile medicine and improve surveillance of poultry. The federal government plans to pick up most of the tab for the antiviral drugs needed to fight the virus if humans are infected, while the states will have to come up with $500 million.


Public Health Director Eric Whitaker also plans to name a committee of bioethicists to determine who in the state should be given priority for the limited supply of antiviral drugs available.

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<B><center>Bird flu may hit Europe by spring

<font size=+1 color=brown>Officials fear spread through migration, future mutations</font>

MATTHEW SCHOFIELDK
night Ridder Newspapers
ISLE OF RIEMS,
<A href="http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/13476672.htm">Bradenton Herald</a></center>
Germany - No one is worried about the traditional Christmas goose in Europe this year, but health officials are scrambling to prepare for what some believe is the certain arrival this spring of a deadly strain of bird flu in migrating wild birds.</b>

Europe first saw the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain this autumn, with cases discovered among dead wildfowl or small flocks of domestic birds in Croatia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. Experts are convinced that those cases are only a warning of what's to come.

Thomas Mettenleiter, the president of Germany's leading animal disease center, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, said millions of wild birds left Europe flu-free this autumn to winter in Africa. There they'll mix with migrating birds from Southeast Asia, where the lethal strain of the virus is far more common.
Migration

Of the ways the disease could arrive in Europe - through infected meat, live poultry or pets - migration is the most troubling. Government has no control over how many birds will arrive and where they'll land.

"March and April are going to be high alert times here," said Mettenleiter. "We've got a lot of work to do before then."

The European Union issued a directive Tuesday urging nations to deal aggressively with low-threat strains of the virus. Investigations should be launched whenever a suspicion of infection arises, it said.

Philip Tod, a spokesman for the EU Health and Consumer Protection Commission, said bird breeders should enclose their pens to limit contact with wild fowl and that signs of the flu should trigger mass culling in infected areas.
Hundreds of millions

Reinhard Burger, the vice president of Germany's infectious disease center, the Robert Koch Institute, said that in the past Europeans could cull infected birds. "But we've never seen numbers approaching what we're expecting to see - hundreds of millions of infected birds will likely be returning to Europe with the spring weather.

"We're walking on a narrow ledge in high mountains this winter. We're very worried," he said.

The bird flu virus started killing birds in Southeast Asia in 2003. Farms with 10,000 birds were wiped out in 48 hours. Millions of birds died or were culled. Since then, the lethal virus has jumped to humans in 141 cases, resulting in 73 deaths, according to the World Health Organization on Friday.

As Mettenleiter explains: "We don't know if H5 strains can sustain a human pandemic, but if they can, the results are potentially catastrophic."
Humans have no immunity to new strains, and some experts estimate that a pandemic could kill more than 100 million people worldwide.
Currently, the flu passes from infected birds into humans through extended contact. But the virus is constantly mutating. A pandemic could start if it mutates into a form that easily transmits from human to human.

No vaccine
Most troubling is the possibility that humans who already have a human strain of flu will be infected. Flu has the ability to "gene-swap," or essentially trade genetic coding. So the H5N1 strain could turn a nonlethal strain that spreads easily among humans into a lethal one.

A vaccine would greatly decrease the number of deaths from bird flu, but a human vaccine isn't possible until the precise mutation that's passing among humans is known, and that hasn't developed yet.

There is a vaccine for birds. But it only would make them more resistant to flu, not stop them from spreading the disease, Mettenleiter said. "If the strain can jump to humans, that's the last thing we want. For now, at least, chickens are our sentinels."

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<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Bird flu seen as real problem in Indonesia </font>

December 24 2005
<A href="http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200512/24/eng20051224_230567.html">People's Daily Online</a></center>
With bird flu already claiming at least 11 lives in Indonesia, Jakartans are aware that the lethal virus is a problem, however they do not appear to be overly worried compared to other Asia-Pacific countries, a survey shows. </b>

Conducted in Jakarta early this month by Taylor Nelson Sofres ( TNS) -- a leading London-based market research company, the survey found that 77 percent of 300 respondents aged from 17 to 65 have chosen to eat less poultry, indicating that some precautions are being taken.

On the other hand, the research published Saturday by The Jakarta Post newspaper shows a lack of knowledge among people, as cooking chickens generally kills the virus provided the meat is heated to 70 Celsius degree or higher.

Almost 40 percent of respondents expect avian flu to become a serious problem within six months, while 48 percent said it would be longer than six months.

"Indonesians, at least in Jakarta, recognize that bird flu is a 'real' problem. At the moment they eat less poultry, but what they want is more security through a vaccination program," TNS Indonesia managing director Hans Lang said.

The Indonesian government confirmed on Thursday that a man and a boy died of bird flu, bringing the country's fatalities from the virus to 11, and the total number of confirmed bird flu cases to 16.

Source: Xinhua

=


<B><font size=+1 color=blue><center>Rapid Evolution of H5N1 Wild Bird Flu in Europe and Asia</font>

<A href="http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12240501/H5N1_Evolution_Europe_Asia.html">Recombinomics Commentary</a>
December 24, 2005</center>
Since the last issue of AIDEnews, outbreaks were suspected or confirmed in Omsk, Tambov, Cheliabinsk, Altai, Kurgan Regions in November, and in Kurgan, Astrakhan and Kalmykia Regions in December. In Astrakhan Regions (in the Volga Delta near the border with Kazakhstan) and in Kalmykia, around 600 dead swans have been found. </b>

Research undertaken by the Russian Vektor Center's zoonotic infections laboratory indicated differences between viruses isolated in Novosibirsk Region: virus isolated in the summer/autumn of 2005 is almost identical to the strain that caused an outbreak in northern China in spring 2005 but the virus found in the second outbreak was similar to virus found in Viet Nam in 2002-2003

The above comments indicate that there are now at least three versions of HPAI H5N1 circulating in Europe. The most common version is closely related to the bar headed geese isolates from Qinghai Lake. These isolates have an HA cleavage site sequence of GERRRKKR which has been reported for isolates in Romania, Turkey, Croatia, Ukraine, and Russia (Tula). This cleavage site matches earlier isolates from Novosibirsk, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan and has been associated with wild bird flu sequences.

The latest Ukraine OIE report however, describes isolates that have a genetic background similar to the above wild bird flu isolates, but with a cleave site of RERRRKKR, which matches the most common cleavage site in Asia including the original Guangdong goose sequence from 1996.

The comments above indicate a third H5N1 species related to isolates from Vietnam in 2002-2003 has been detected in the Volga Delta region. The earlier Vietnam isolates (A/Chicken/Vietnam/Ncvd8/2003(H5N1) , A/DuckVietnam/Ncvd1/2002(H5N1)) were also HPAI, but had a unique HA cleavage site, REIRRKKR, which had also been detected in a teal from China (A/teal/China/2978.1/2002(H5N1)) as well as swine from Fujian province (A/swine/Fujian/F1/2001(H5N1), A/swine/Fujian/F1/2003(H5N1)) isolated in 2001-2003. Russia has not filed an OIE report of the outbreaks in the Volga Delta / Kalmykia regions, so it is unclear if those isolates have the REIRRKKR or RERRRKKR cleavage site, but clearly the HPAI H5N1 in Europe is becoming more diverse.

This diversity highlights the need for more surveillance of wild birds in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa because the introduction of HPAI H5N1 into these regions presents new opportunities for recombination and the generation of novel genes which may have an increased efficiency of human-to-human transmission.

Recent reports from the Ukraine indicated the H5N1 isolated on the Crimea peninsula was unique and birds died 2-8 hours after symptoms, which included blindness in waterfowl. These novel isolates also point toward the need from more sequence data from poultry outbreaks in China. Novel HA cleavage sites have been reported in whooper swan isolates from Mongolia as well as a chicken in Hunan, which was linked to the first reported human H5N1 case in mainland China.

H5N1 is clearly rapidly evolving in Asia and Europe and timely reporting of sequence data is increasingly important.

=




<B><center>AVIAN INFLUENZA - EURASIA (108): FAO, UPDATE
***************************************</b></center>
A ProMED-mail post
<http://www.promedmail.org>
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
<http://www.isid.org>

Sponsored in part by Elsevier, publisher of Virology
<http://thelancet.url123.com/xr4zp>

[1]
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005
From: ProMED-mail <promed@promedmail.org>
Source: FAO-AIDE News, isue No 37, 23 Dec 2005 [edited].


<B><center>Update on the Avian Influenza situation as of 23 Dec 2005
------------------------------------------------------ ---</b></center>
1. Latest information on Avian Influenza

2 years have passed since the 1st case of Highly Pathogenic Avian
Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 was reported to OIE from the Republic of Korea
on 12 Dec 2003. The disease has spread from Southeast Asia to the
north-west involving Quinghai Lake, Xinjang Province in China,
Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania, Turkey, Croatia, and now has
also been confirmed in Ukraine. Meanwhile, some countries in EU have
decided to relax control measures since the wildfowl migration for
this winter, which is regarded as a high risk factor, is reaching an
end.

2.Country situation

<B><center>a. Europe.</b></center>

Ukraine (22 Dec 2005):
Massive deaths of poultry started on 25 Nov 2005 in near Sivash Lake,
on the Crimean Peninsula, and preliminary testing confirmed the
presence of avian influenza virus of sub-type H5 on 8 Dec 2005. It
was later confirmed as HPAI H5N1 by a Laboratory in Russia and by
VLA-Weybridge, UK. The disease has so far spread to at least 27
villages on the Crimean Peninsula. On 3 Dec 2005, the President
decreed a state of emergency in the Peninsula and the Government made
available about 5 million dollars for compensation to poultry
breeders on 4 Dec 2005.

Control measures imposed include quarantine of infected properties,
the creation of sanitary cordons of approximately 3 km radius and
prohibition of the sale of backyard poultry and poultry products in
the Crimea. Outbreaks in Dzhankoyskiy, Nizhnegorskiy and Sovetskiy
Districts were reported to OIE on 5 Dec 2005. Since then,
veterinarians and soldiers have seized and culled more than 67 000
domestic fowl, including chicken, geese, ducks and turkeys in
affected villages.

Romania (22 Dec 2005):
In November, AI sub-type H5 outbreaks were reported in 7 swans, a
chicken and a turkey in Calarasi and Braila counties, and H5N1 was
confirmed in samples from Calarasi and Braila Counties by
VLA-Weybridge. During December, the disease was further reported in
chickens and ducks in Braila, Buzau, Calarasi, Ialomita and Tulcea
(near the border with Ukraine) Counties. Romania has been conducting
surveillance by sampling of 1200 birds every week. The Ministry of
Agriculture urged villagers to keep their poultry confined to avoid
contact with migrating birds. Some 53 000 poultry have been culled in
Romania between 7 Oct 2005 and early December. In November, Romania
has collected 150 samples from wild birds, mainly seagulls for virus
isolation testing.

Russia (20 Dec 2005):
Since the last issue of AIDEnews, outbreaks were suspected or
confirmed in Omsk, Tambov, Cheliabinsk, Altai, Kurgan Regions in
November, and in Kurgan, Astrakhan and Kalmykia Regions in December.
In Astrakhan Regions (in the Volga Delta near the border with
Kazakhstan) and in Kalmykia, around 600 dead swans have been found.
Research undertaken by the Russian Vektor Center's zoonotic
infections laboratory indicated differences between viruses isolated
in Novosibirsk Region: virus isolated in the summer/autumn of 2005 is
almost identical to the strain that caused an outbreak in northern
China in spring 2005 but the virus found in the second outbreak was
similar to virus found in Viet Nam in 2002-2003.)

<B><center>b. South, Southeast and East Asia</b></center>

China (15 Dec 2005):
Further outbreaks were confirmed in chickens, ducks and geese in 8 of
the 30 provinces/autonomous regions during November and in one in
December. Areas where outbreaks were found are the Fuxin
Municipality, Jinzhou Municipality, Beining City (Liaoning Province),
Zepu County, Urumqi County, Hetian City, Urumqi City, Miquan City,
Shanshan County, Xinyuan County (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region),
Huainan City (Anhui Province), Jingshan county, Xiaogan city, Shishou
city (Hubei Province), Zalantun city, Molidawa Dawo'er Autonomous
County (Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), Yinchuan City (Ningxia
Autonomous Region), Xiaoyi City (Shanxi Province), Chuxiong City
(Yunnan Province). The most recent case was reported in ducks in
Suichuan County (Jiangxi Province) detected on 6 Dec 2005. The
country decided to vaccinate all 14 billion poultry (raised per
year). According to news media, Chinese officials said that samples
of the oral secretions of pigs have tested positive for bird flu i!
n Xiangtan County, Hunan Province. [This information seems to be
novel. Details on the virus involved will be appreciated. - Mod.AS]
There had been 21 outbreaks in China this year, 144 624 birds have
died and 21.1 million have been culled. According to WHO, there have
been 5 human cases of which 2 were fatal.

Viet Nam (21 Dec 2005):
The latest case of HPAI was found on 15 Dec 2005 in a flock of 140
ducks in Ninh Binh Province. Since 1 Oct 2005, a total of 3 702 257
poultry have been culled of which 1 245 072 [were] chickens and 1 980
369 muscovy ducks and [other?] ducks. As of 21 Dec 2005, vaccination
has been implemented in 64 provinces and cities, of which 2 rounds of
vaccination have been completed in 21 provinces. A total of 135.3 and
67.7 million doses have been vaccinated in chickens and ducks
respectively.

Indonesia (30 Nov 2005]:
Outbreaks have been detected in 23 of Indonesia's 33 provinces. H5N1
virus has been discovered in Tsunami-hit Aceh Province in its 3
districts including Pidie. Birds were found infected with avian
influenza virus in 7 of 20 subdistricts in Jakarta. Outbreaks were
also suspected in Tangerang Province, West Java and East Nusa
Tenggara Province, West Timor.

--
<b>ProMED-mail</b>
<promed@promedmail.org>

<B><center>******</b></center>
[2]
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005
From: <b>ProMED-mail</b> <promed@promedmail.org>
Source: Reuters alertnet, 23 Dec 2005 [edited]
<http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L23246376.htm>


Romania discovered a new outbreak of bird flu in a village 80 km (50
miles) east of Bucharest, indicating avian flu might be spreading
towards the city of 2.5 million people, the farm ministry said on
Friday [23 Dec 2005]. Since October, Romania has found avian flu in
24 villages in and around the Danube delta on the Black Sea, where
the deadly strain of the virus was first discovered 300 km from
Bucharest. "Samples from domestic birds from one small farm in the
Stefan Voda village in Calarasi county tested positive for bird flu,"
the ministry said in a statement.

It said domestic birds in the small farm where bird flu was
discovered were culled and the farm was quarantined, while tests are
being carried out on birds in the whole village. 9 cases have been
confirmed as the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain since October 2005,
and the ministry said it will send 7 more samples from the counties
of Ialomita and Calarasi in the east of the country to a British
laboratory to be tested.

--
<b>ProMED-mail</b>
<promed@promedmail.org>

[The newswires from Romania, describing the daily advance of the
disease towards Bucharest, might evoke unpleasant reminiscences of
the introduction in 1996 of another zoonotic virus, West Nile virus,
which caused a major epidemic (352 recorded acute
central-nervous-system infections, 17 fatalities). Though WNV, unlike
avian influenza, is an arbovirus (_Culex pipiens_ was incriminated as
the vector), its initial introduction into south-eastern Romania and
Bucharest was ascribed to migratory birds.

Surveillance activities included avian investigations; interestingly,
only one of 12 Passeriformes sampled, an _Erithacus rubecula_, was
found positive for neutralizing antibody to WN virus, while domestic
fowl had a very high infection rate (see table 4 in: Savage et al,
1999. Entomologic and Avian Investigations of an Epidemic of West
Nile Fever in Romania in 1996, with Serologic and Molecular
Characterization of a Virus Isolate from Mosquitoes. Am. J. Trop.
Med. Hyg., 61(4), pp. 600-611).

The outbreak was confined to 14 districts in the lower Danube valley
and Bucharest. The authors indicate that although the Danube Delta is
home to only about 44 resident species of birds, millions of
migratory birds, representing at least 100 species, move through the
region, many of them summering in northern Europe and Asia, including
Siberia and Mongolia, returning southwards on their fall migration in
August to October. - Mod.AS]

bump

What's really scary is the thought of airport personnel screening for human bird flu cases! Are they going to quarantine anyone getting on/off a plan with a cough? How are they going to know whether it's a run-of-the-mill cold or the bird flu?

Maybe there's future employment for medical people in the airline industry???

=

This thread appears to have reached it's limit of interest (and it is a day old now)..

So I'll Move it to the Infectious Disease Forum</center>