04/14 | Daily BF: Scientists look north for first U.S. bird flu case

Link to yesterday's thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=193295

Human Cases

Since January, 2004 WHO has reported human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) in the following countries:

* East Asia and the Pacific:
o Cambodia
o China
o Indonesia
o Thailand
o Vietnam

* Europe & Eurasia:
o Azerbaijan
(see update)
o Turkey

* Near East:
o Egypt
o Iraq

For additional information about these reports, visit the
World Health Organization Web Site.

Updated April 3, 2006

Animal Cases

Since December 2003, avian influenza A (H5N1) infections in poultry or wild birds have been reported in the following countries:

* Africa:
o Burkina Faso
o Cameroon
o Niger
o Nigeria

* East Asia & the Pacific:
o Cambodia
o China
o Hong Kong (SARPRC)
o Indonesia
o Japan
o Laos
o Malaysia
o Mongolia
o Myanmar (Burma)
o Thailand
o Vietnam

* South Asia:
o Afghanistan
o India
o Kazakhstan
o Pakistan

* Near East:
o Egypt
o Iraq (H5)
o Iran
o Israel
o Jordan

* Europe & Eurasia:
o
* Albania
* Austria
* Azerbaijan
* Bosnia & Herzegovina
* Bulgaria
* Croatia
* Czech Republic (H5)
* Denmark
* France
* Georgia
* Germany
* Greece
* Hungary
* Italy
* Poland
* Romania
* Russia
* Serbia & Montenegro
* Slovak Republic
* Slovenia
* Sweden
* Switzerland
* Turkey
* Ukraine
* United Kingdom


For additional information about these reports, visit the
World Organization for Animal Health Web Site: http://www.oie.int/eng/en_index.htm

Updated April 7, 2006

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/outbreaks/current.htm

WHO, Avian Flu Timeline in .pdf: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/timeline.pdf

Scientists look north for first U.S. bird flu case
Migrating wild birds expected to bring deadly virus to Alaska soon​

Updated: 6:10 p.m. ET April 13, 2006

WASHINGTON - In about three weeks, waterfowl, shorebirds and songbirds will start arriving in the Alaska Peninsula, the Yukon Delta and the westernmost Aleutian Islands to begin mating. That’s when and where government scientists expect the first case of bird flu to show up in the United States.

To screen the birds for the deadly virus, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Alaska’s Fish and Game Department are setting up more than 50 remote backcountry camps accessible mainly by float planes or boats.

More than 40 species of waterfowl and shorebirds are considered susceptible to infection by a highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus that’s killed more than 100 people, mostly in Asia. It also has killed or led to the slaughter of more than 200 million chickens, ducks, turkeys and other domestic fowl in Asia, Europe and Africa.

Species migrating from Asia across the Bering Strait — considered the most likely carriers of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus — include eiders, pintails, geese, long-tailed ducks, dunlins, sandpipers and plovers. There’s also concern about gulls, terns and falcons.

$29 million surveillance program
Rick Kearney, wildlife program coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, described the $29 million surveillance program to collect and sample 100,000 birds — 15,000 to 20,000 in Alaska alone — as an early warning system for poultry producers and health officials in the lower 48 states.

“If we find it this summer, it could provide them with several weeks of warning,” he said. “We’re looking in all places, but we’re looking most intently in the place we most expect to find it, Alaska.”

Kearney is co-author of the joint surveillance plan created by the Interior and Agriculture departments and the state of Alaska for use in all 50 states.

The plan mentions that the H5N1 virus also could arrive in the U.S. through a smuggled chicken or duck, an infected traveler, black-market trade in exotic birds or even an act of bioterrorism, but it says the most likely carrier will be a migrating wild bird.

Government officials say there’s no known case of virus being passed from a wild bird to a person and no one knows whether wild bird-to-person transmission is possible.

Thousands of birds to be tested
At each of the more than 50 camps in Alaska, several government biologists, volunteers and contractors stationed for days or weeks at a time will test living birds, those dead from unknown causes and hunter-killed birds such as those taken during Alaska Native subsistence hunts.

They’ll collect the samples by swabbing both ends of a bird’s digestive system for mucous and feces. At least 200 birds from each sample population are needed to detect the virus accurately.

After Alaska, surveillance priorities are a matter of geography: the Pacific flyway from the Canadian border to southern California and then east to the Central, Mississippi and Atlantic flyways.

The swabs will be sent to one of 40 veterinary labs around the country certified by the government as capable of testing them for the bird flu virus. Most are state-run or associated with universities.

Ground zero for the testing program is the Interior Department’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., which alone is expected to handle 12,000 to 15,000 samples.

It could be a week or so before sample results are known. From there, the plan calls for confirmatory testing to be done by Agriculture Department labs in Ames, Iowa, and Athens, Ga.

“If highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus becomes established in North America, the likelihood of rapid and diffusive spread across the continent is high,” according to the surveillance plan Kearney co-authored with Thomas DeLiberto, wildlife disease coordinator for the Agriculture Department.

In that case, the plan calls for focusing on urban zoos, parks and lakes where the highest concentrations of people could come into contact with contaminated water and waterfowl. It also targets ponds, lakes and waterfowl management areas around the biggest poultry producers.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12305588/from/RSS/

Ivory Coast

Suspected bird flu outbreak in Ivory Coast​

Thu Apr 13, 3:28 PM ET

A suspected outbreak of bird flu has been discovered in a village in the Bondoukou region of Ivory Coast, Bondoukou's deputy regional governor Jean-Paul Kablan said.

If confirmed, it would be the first outbreak of the disease in Ivory Coast, whose government has been urging calm since the first case of the deadly H5N1 virus in Africa was confirmed in February.

Kablan said the deaths of around 100 chickens and four dogs who ate their carcasses had caused "panic" in the community, situated 500 kilometres (310 miles) east of Abidjan.

"A week ago we noticed some suspicious poultry deaths in rural farms in Soko and scientists came from Abidjan to take swabs," he said.

"The people are very worried and are eagerly awaiting the test results," he added.

Kablan said hen houses had been "systematically burned" in response but complained of a "shortage of resources".

The first case of H5N1 in Africa was confirmed in Nigeria on February 26.

Since then, poultry farmers in the east of Ivory Coast, the country's main bird-rearing region, have suffered a dramatic fall in trade due to fear of the disease.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060413/hl_afp/icoasthealthflu_060413192822

Austria

101 cases of H5N1 bird flu virus detected in Austria since mid February​

14.04.2006
URL: http://english.pravda.ru/world/79161-birdflu-0

One hundred and one cases of the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain have been detected in Austria since the virus first surfaced in mid February, Austrian media reported Thursday.

In total, more than 2,100 specimen were tested since the virus first appeared on Feb. 14, the Austrian broadcaster ORF reported.

The tests, carried out by a laboratory in the Lower Austrian town of Moedling, determined the strain in 59 swans, 27 ducks, six chickens, four water fowl, two geese, one coot, one seagull and one egret, ORF said.

Vienna tops the list of affected areas with 40 cases.

Austrian Health Minister Maria Rauch-Kallat said that despite the increase in bird flu cases, Austrian poultry was still safe to eat, reports AP.

Bird flu threat is 'very dynamic'​

IAN JOHNSTON

THE threat posed by bird flu is "very dynamic and uncertain" but Britain is doing everything it should to spot any further cases of the disease, according to a report by government veterinarians.

A full veterinary risk assessment was carried out following the discovery that a swan which died of the H5N1 strain of the disease, found in Cellardyke, Fife, was a migratory whooper swan rather than a native mute swan. A report published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs yesterday said: "We are still in a very dynamic and uncertain situation.

"There have been widespread and sporadic detections of highly pathogenic avian influenza in dead wild birds in many locations across Europe over the past few months and further developments are likely."

However, it added: "At the time of writing, we do not consider that the new evidence on the species of dead swan significantly alters the outcome of our previous risk assessment.

"The intensified surveillance in the wild bird risk area is directed to early detection of spread to other birds in the area local to where the positive case was found and results to date are negative. Wild birds surveillance across Britain will continue in order to identify any disease outside this area."

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=568412006

Indonesia is bird flu 'time-bomb' - animal health chief​

http://freeserve.advfn.com/news_Ind...ime-bomb----animal-health-chief_15033712.html

PARIS (AFX) - Indonesia has become a bird flu "time-bomb" because of its
failure to eradicate high numbers of deadly H5N1 sites, the head of the
Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health said.
"Indonesia is a time-bomb for the region," said organisation head Bernard
Vallat, calling the situation a cause for "great concern".
"It is important for the Indonesian government to take the political
decision" to step up its controls, with international help, Vallat said in an
interview with Agence France-Presse.
Vallat said Indonesia is "one of the only countries in Asia" to have such a
large number of unchecked infection sites.
He called for international creditors to "intervene massively" to help stem
the spread of the virus, stressing the correlation between the number of
infected birds and the number of cases of transmission to humans.
Thirty-three people have been contaminated in Indonesia by the deadly H5N1
strain of bird flu, 24 of whom died, according to the World Health Organisation.

Bird flu experts expect U.S. case soon​

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/feature...14apr14,0,7561073.story?coll=sfla-news-health

By John Heilprin
The Associated Press
Posted April 14 2006

WASHINGTON · In about three weeks, waterfowl, shorebirds and songbirds will start arriving in the Alaska Peninsula, the Yukon Delta and the westernmost Aleutian Islands to begin mating. That's when and where government scientists expect the first case of bird flu to show up in the United States.

To screen the birds for the deadly virus, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Alaska's Fish and Game Department are setting up more than 50 remote backcountry camps accessible mainly by float planes or boats.

More than 40 species of waterfowl and shorebirds are considered susceptible to infection by a highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus that's killed more than 100 people, mostly in Asia.

It also has killed or led to the slaughter of more than 200 million chickens, ducks, turkeys and other domestic fowl in Asia, Europe and Africa.

Species migrating from Asia across the Bering Strait -- considered the most likely carriers of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus -- include eiders, pintails, geese, long-tailed ducks, dunlins, sandpipers and plovers. There's also concern about gulls, terns and falcons.

Rick Kearney, wildlife program coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, described the $29 million surveillance program to collect and sample 100,000 birds -- 15,000 to 20,000 in Alaska alone -- as an early warning system for poultry producers and health officials in the lower 48 states.

"If we find it this summer, it could provide them with several weeks of warning," he said. "We're looking in all places, but we're looking most intently in the place we most expect to find it, Alaska."

Kearney is co-author of the joint surveillance plan created by the Interior and Agriculture departments and the state of Alaska for use in all 50 states.

At each of the more than 50 camps in Alaska, several government biologists, volunteers and contractors stationed for days or weeks at a time will test living birds, those dead from unknown causes and hunter-killed birds such as those taken during Alaska Native subsistence hunts.

They'll collect the samples by swabbing both ends of a bird's digestive system for mucous and feces. At least 200 birds from each sample population are needed to detect the virus accurately.

After Alaska, surveillance priorities are a matter of geography: the Pacific flyway from the Canadian border to southern California and then east to the Central, Mississippi and Atlantic flyways.

Egypt confirms fourth bird flu death​

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/6143.html

CAIRO, Egypt - The Ministry of Health has confirmed that a fourth Egyptian has died of bird flu. The victim was an 18-year-old woman named Samah Mandouh Abdel Ghaffar who died in Manoufiya on Thursday. She had been admitted to the hospital on April 10 and had been on life support since then, Egyptian Health Minister Hatem el-Gabaly confirmed in a statement.

"An 18-year-old woman from Ashmoun in Monoufiya has died of bird flu, bringing the number of deaths to four from the 12 people who have been infected," the minister was quoted as saying by the state MENA news agency. The woman was admitted to the hospital after becoming infected since she handled domestic birds carrying the infection. She died despite receiving Tamiflu, the Roche manufactured anti-viral touted as the best defense against bird flu in humans.



Bird flu arrived in Egypt in February and the first deaths were reported in mid-March. The World Health Organization (WHO) has voiced concerns over the human death toll in such a short period of time. In Egypt all death have been of women, who are responsible for culling and cooking poultry. Authorities have called for more awareness to be spread in the populace so that women can protect themselves and their families.

Bird flu was first detected in Asia in 2003 and has since claimed 109 lives according to official figures. Experts fear that the deadly H5N1 virus might mutate to a form that is easily transmissible between humans. If this happens a pandemic could be triggered claiming millions of lives, they say. However, in the recent past authorities in England have expressed doubt over the inevitability of the bird flu pandemic. The country's chief scientific officer Sir David King had said that it was totally misleading to say that a global pandemic is inevitable.

New bird flu cases found in southern Russia​

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-04/14/content_4423093.htm

MOSCOW, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Russia has found the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu virus in the southern state of Volgograd, the second case in two weeks, state veterinary authorities said on Thursday.

Test results indicated that the blood of 25 hens, which died on Tuesday in a village in Volgograd, was carrying the H5N1 virus.

H5N1 was found among dozens of dead birds in Volgograd late last month.

In addition to Volgograd, the H5N1 virus lingers in three other regions in Russia, including Krasnodar, Stavropol and Dagestan.

Bird flu infections have been confirmed in 11 regions in southern Russia since the beginning of the year, and around 1.4 million head of poultry have been culled or have died. Enditem

Russia

Russia loses half of farm poultry because of bird flu – official​

14.04.2006, 20.07

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

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

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

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

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=6389645&PageNum=0

AG mutes agencies on all deaths in Delaware​

Update 4:00 pm
By Mike Billington
The News Journal
04/14/2006

Delaware Attorney General Carl Danberg has ordered the state’s Department of Health and Social Services not to release any data relating to the cause and manner of death for the next two weeks while he and his staff review a recent Delaware Supreme Court decision regarding the release of autopsy results.

That goes for information about deaths that could be related to public health threats, including Avian Flu and West Nile.

The Supreme Court’s April 3 decision derived from a lawsuit filed by The News Journal seeking the results of an autopsy conducted on Rehoboth Beach fitness center owner Duane Lawson. He was found dead in a burned BMW in a Rehoboth Beach area parking garage on Feb. 15, 2005. His family objected to the release of the autopsy report, prompting the Freedom of Information lawsuit.

DHSS spokesman Jay Lynch said Friday that under Danberg’s order, “No information will be released to the public while the decision is under review. The information will continue to be shared with the necessary bodies, agencies, registries, law enforcement, and family.”

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060414/NEWS/60414018/1006/NEWS

Bird Shooting

April 15, 2006

Birds being shot down 'for fear of infection'​

By Helen Nugent

SWANS and other wild birds are being shot down by people worried about bird flu, according to a wildlife rescue group.

Healthy swans, peregrine falcons and Canada geese have been shot out of the sky in Salisbury this year, despite pleas from wildlife experts to leave the birds alone.

Rescuers from Salisbury Wildlife Rescue found another injured swan on Monday, struggling to reach a river with a broken leg and nine pellets lodged in its chest. A local vet had to destroy the bird.

Philip Groombridge, from Wildlife Rescue, said: “It is ridiculous. People are shooting at everything flying over their land in case the birds have bird flu, but there is nothing wrong with them. The swan we found on Monday was peppered at least nine times. This swan was shot by a shotgun.”

Salisbury is home to about 350 swans. Mr Groombridge and his colleague, Tony Green, rescue about 200 each year but say more and more birds are being shot. “We suspect this is because of misplaced fears about bird flu,” Mr Green said.

It has been suggested that the decomposed swan infected with bird flu found in the harbour in Cellardyke, Scotland, had come from Germany. The bird had a similar strain of the H5N1 virus to one that affected birds in Ruegen Island in the Baltic Sea.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25149-2135269,00.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025473.600-uks-bird-tests-may-be-missing-flu-virus.html

UK's bird tests may be missing flu virus
12 April 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition
Debora MacKenzie

WHEN France reported its first case of H5N1 bird flu in February, the UK's response was adamant: samples had been taken from more than 3500 wild birds, and those tested so far showed the disease was not yet in the UK. Additional precautions, such as moving poultry indoors, were unnecessary, said the authorities.

Last week, scientists found H5N1 bird flu for the first time in the UK, in a dead swan in Fife, Scotland. The UK's environment ministry DEFRA again stated that all wild birds tested so far were negative for flu, so it was unlikely to be widespread. Now an investigation by New Scientist suggests that all those tests were flawed, meaning no one really knows just how widespread infection among British wild birds might be.

Suspicions have been raised because DEFRA's tests revealed none of the ordinary flu that ducks and geese normally carry. Of the 3343 faecal samples from wild birds taken for DEFRA by the conservation group the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) in December, only two were shown to contain low-pathogenicity bird flu - 0.06 per cent. In a parallel study for DEFRA conducted by hunters, bird flu was found in only three of 423 freshly shot ducks, or 0.7 per cent. "We thought there was an unusually low level," says Ruth Crommie of the WWT, "but perhaps that happens in some bird populations."

Flu experts contacted by New Scientist disagree. "There's something wrong with those numbers," says Björn Olsen of the University of Kalmar in Sweden, who tests up to 10,000 wild birds per year in Europe's biggest monitoring programme for avian flu. Normally, he says, around 10 per cent of dabbling ducks and 1 per cent of geese should be carrying low-pathogenicity bird flu in Europe in December.

Richard Slemmons of Ohio State University in Columbus has tested 2000 to 3000 water birds per year for 20 years. His chief technician, Jacqueline Nolting, told New Scientist that "at least 6 or 7 per cent should be positive" at any time.

The problem may have been DEFRA's method of collecting samples. Crommie says DEFRA told WWT samplers to moisten a sterile swab on a stick with saline, take a faecal sample from the bird, then put the swab back in its dry plastic tube. The tubes were then kept at refrigerator temperature and taken to the testing laboratories the next day.

Both Nolting and Olsen are adamant that swabs must be immediately immersed in a saline or preservative solution, and also frozen quickly. "If you left a swab in the refrigerator in its sheath like that, it would dry out and you'd lose all your virus," says Olsen. He says whoever planned the tests "should have talked to us". DEFRA has not done large-scale flu surveys before.

"If you just want to identify the viruses present you could put it in a nutrient solution or in ethanol, but you need a transport medium," says Nolting. "We never take dry swabs." Both groups also quickly freeze samples.

DEFRA declined to comment on whether its sampling method would deliver intact virus to the testing labs. It says different results in previous surveys "did not invalidate the present survey".

Meanwhile, Olsen says H5N1 was most likely carried to the UK by migratory ducks, which could have spread the virus to wintering grounds all over the country. DEFRA's tests would probably not have picked it up.

Free-range poultry have been brought indoors in the region where the Scottish swan was found, but as New Scientist went to press poultry elsewhere were still outside - where, as far as anyone knows, they may remain at risk.

From issue 2547 of New Scientist magazine, 12 April 2006, page 12

Link to tomorrows (4/15) Bird Flu thread: http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=193609