Highly pathogenic avian influenza in Korea Emergency report

Here is one media interpretation of the transcript:

FDA balked at riskier, but better, flu shot
By David Migoya and Marsha Austin
THE DENVER POST

Federal regulators could have approved a flu vaccine that protected the public against the deadly strain sweeping across the country, but would have had to use a controversial and risky method to do it.

A leading national expert on infectious diseases told a Food and Drug Administration committee in February and again in March that it would be a mistake if this year's vaccine didn't guard against a potentially lethal strain of flu that was beginning to emerge in the Southern Hemisphere.

Dr. Peter Palese warned that the flu strain - known as A-Fujian/411/2002 - seemed likely to hit the United States and that drastic measures were required to protect public health. Creating a vaccine that offered only moderate safeguards against the new strain was a bad idea, he warned, according to official transcripts of FDA meetings earlier this year.

"I feel that it is better in the long run to have a good vaccine or a better vaccine … than having just a potential (for protection)," Palese, director of microbiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, told the FDA panel in March.

http://www.dailystar.com/star/today/31214NFLU-VACCINE-DEN.html

The transcript of the vaccine selection committee mentions signature changes at amino acid positions 155 and 156 in HA. The change of H155T actually involves two mutations (C463A and A464C). Interestingly, the same changes are found in pigs and ducks. They are also found in human isolates collected just after the 1968 Pandemic. The other change also involves two mutations to produce Q156H. In Fujian it is A468T and in the other Fujian-like isolates it is A468C. It looks like the virus was pretty serious about changing those two amino acids.

Unfortunately, I suspect the "signature" will be Peter Palese's vote on the science and everyone else's focus on expediency or cost cutting (using the same old Panama strain for the 4th year in a row).

I think it will be a VERY long winter.

As you noted the Korean bird flu has not been shown to infect humans. The odds of that happening have historically been very, very low. Then of course there're the issues of communicability and mortality of any strain that does manage to make the leap. Imo the odds of an avian-derived flu pandemic are not newsworthy.

Many more people lived in close proximity to livestock and their waste 100 years ago. I believe that determines the frequency of animal-to-human transmission. I think people consider it an issue now because of higher health standards. Additionally, detection and reporting of infections have dramatically improved. 100 years ago this incident wouldn't have even made local news.

South Korea hit by deadly bird flu

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) --A highly contagious bird flu, strains of which are deadly to humans, has killed thousands of chickens and ducks in central South Korea, an agriculture official has said.

Authorities have culled thousands more in an effort to contain the disease.

Tests found the bird flu was caused by the H5N1 virus.

But authorities are still investigating whether it is the deadly H5N1-97 strain that crossed from chickens to humans in Hong Kong in 1997, killing six people, a Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry official said on condition of anonymity.

South Korea began its probe after 20,000 chickens died at a farm in the town of Umsung, some 70 kilometers (40 miles) southeast of Seoul, earlier this month.

Since then, the agriculture ministry has culled 5,000 other chickens at the farm as a precaution and has quarantined poultry within a 10 kilometer (6-mile) radius.

On Tuesday, ducks at a farm near Umsung also tested positive for the bird flu, and authorities ordered 3,300 of the ducks to be killed and buried.

South Korean officials say there is only a small chance of the virus crossing from birds to humans because most strains of H5N1 are not transmittable. Less fatal bird flus have hit South Korea periodically since 1996.

Virus samples were to be sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, for definitive testing.

Early this month in Hong Kong, a 5-year-old boy came down with bird flu, but not the same H5N1 strain that caused a deadly outbreak in 1997. The boy has since recovered.

Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/12/15/skorea.birdflu.ap

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