Posted on 05/09/2005 10:18:08 AM PDT by Dog Gone
Some folks suggested that we begin a thread similar to the Marsburg Surveillance Project for monitoring developments regarding Avian Flu.
The purpose is to have an extended thread where those interested can post articles and comments as this story unfolds.
If we're lucky, the story and this thread will fade away.
British Columbia bird with H5 infection but neuramanidase type not yet determined.
Main Entry: neur·amin·i·dase
Pronunciation: "n(y)ur-&-'min-&-"dAs, -"dAz
Function: noun
: a hydrolytic enzyme that occurs on the surface of the pneumococcus, the orthomyxoviruses, and some paramyxoviruses and that cleaves terminal acetylated neuraminic acids from sugar residues (as in glycoproteins and mucoproteins)
Influenza A viruses are divided into subtypes based on two proteins on the surface of the virus: the hemagglutinin (H) and the neuraminidase (N). There are 15 different hemagglutinin subtypes and 9 different neuraminidase subtypes, all of which have been found among influenza A viruses in wild birds. Wild birds are the primary natural reservoir for all subtypes of influenza A viruses and are thought to be the source of influenza A viruses in all other animals. Most influenza viruses cause asymptomatic or mild infection in birds; however, the range of symptoms in birds varies greatly depending on the strain of virus. Infection with certain avian influenza A viruses (for example, some strains of H5 and H7 viruses) can cause widespread disease and death among some species of wild and especially domestic birds such as chickens and turkeys.
(paragraph above from http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/fluviruses.htm)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Avian influenza has been found in a duck on a farm in southwestern British Columbia, but the bird appeared to pose little risk to public health, officials said on Friday.
Officials were alerted to the duck on Thursday, and said initial testing indicated it was an H5-type avian influenza virus, but more testing was needed to identify the specific strain, said Dr. Jim Clark of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Health officials around the world have been on the watch for the H5N1 strain of the virus that experts fear may mutate just enough to allow it to be easily transmitted among humans. There are nine known N strains of H5 virus.
Officials said the virus was discovered in routine tests after the bird was sent to them for unrelated reasons by a commercial packing house.
"We do know that the flock that this bird was taken from appears to be healthy, and is for all intensive purposes well," Clark told reporters.
The farm in Abbotsford in the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver has been quarantined and animal health inspectors were visiting farms within a 3-mile (5-km) area, a move officials said was standard procedure after such a discovery.
Officials said the farm where the duck was raised had allowed its birds to be outside of barns, which meant the animal might have come in contact with wild waterfowl that are known to carry the disease.
"The finding of avian influenza in a domestic duck flock is not surprising. Birds are known carriers of the virus that are commonly raised under conditions that they may be exposed to avian influenza viruses carried by wild birds," Clark said.
A sampling program of birds in a different area of British Columbia over the summer found 24 percent tested positive for H5 bird flu, although none of those birds showed signs of being ill and none was carrying the H5N1 strain.
That program was begun because of an outbreak of an H7 type of bird flu in the Fraser Valley last year. That virus spread quickly among farms and eventually caused officials to cull 16 million poultry in the area.
"In this particular incidence, we have no reason to believe that there is a virus that is going to cause any significant risk on this particular farm itself or farms nearby," said Ron Lewis, British Columbia's chief veterinarian.
http://www.metronews.ca/reuters_national.asp?id=109889
Avian Flu: China Should Confess to the World
Woman dies of bird flu, vaccine trials to start
The Hong Kong University says each sick person will infect another 1,024 within one month. It is predicted that there will be one million victims in Hong Kong alone. Meanwhile, China has acknowledged a second death.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Scmp) - Each Sars patient was responsible for infecting 27 people in 30 days. Every bird flu infection will cause 1,024 others in a month.
That's 38 times as fast a spread of disease. It is one of the frightening assumptions underlying a disease model that experts hope will help prepare for a H5N1 pandemic. With a worst-case scenario as gloomy as that - it is based on the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed 50 million people - the experts say, not surprisingly, that the first two weeks will be key to containing a bird flu outbreak.
The Centre for Health Protection's disease modelling committee is assuming the first wave of a bird flu pandemic will last three to four months.
Under its worst-case scenario, the disease-modelling team from the University of Hong Kong assumes each flu patient will infect two others every three days. "According to this formula, each index patient will infect 1,024 people in 30 days," said the committee's chairman Gabriel Leung, HKU associate professor of community medicine.
In 2003, Sars infected 1,755 people in Hong Kong, of whom 299 died. Dr Leung said based on the current bird flu outbreak in Southeast Asia, in which more than half the 120-plus people infected have died, the first two to three weeks would be crucial to putting a lid on the spread of the virus.
Dr Leung said his team would work with the Centre for Health Protection around the clock if there is a pandemic.
"We will update the situation in our modelling to get a real-time projection of the number of infected, hospital admissions and mortality rate. The projection will give us an idea when and how to act - for example, the right time to quarantine the infected or distribute [antiviral drug] Tamiflu to the health-care workers."
Dr Leung said the government had to weigh the costs and benefits of the measures it took.
"For example, quarantine and contact tracing are standard procedures, but when we have tens of thousands of cases, are there enough holiday camps to quarantine so many people? And do we have manpower for so much contact tracing?" The centre estimates a flu pandemic would attack a million people in Hong Kong.
China. The mainland last night reported its second human death from bird flu. The 35-year-old woman, a farmer from Anhui province, died on Tuesday after developing a fever and pneumonia following contact with sick and dead poultry, the Ministry of Health said.
Recombinomics Commentary
November 24, 2005
A resident of northern Israel may have contracted bird flu, the Health Ministry has reported. The man underwent a blood test, after a previous test indicated "further tests" were necessary to clarify his condition.
The man has recovered from the illness he was suffering from and released to his home, but preliminary tests reveal he may still be suffering from bird flu.
The above comments suggest that the patient has tested positive for H5N1 bird flu. These results are cause for concern. Although prior boxun reports suggeste the H5N1 wild bird flu at Qinghai Lake could cause human cases and fatalities, human cases were not reported in Russia. Kazakhstan, Mongolia, or European countries reporting H5N1 wild bird flu.
However recently China has confirmed H5N1 in patients in Anhui and Hunan and a case in Liaoning is under investigation. Moreover, recent boxun reports cite 77 H5N1 human fatalities in Liaoning.
The Middle East is of considerable concern because of the large number of migratory birds that pass through the Middle East when migrating from Europe to Africa. Although Israel has not report confirmed cases of H5N1, they have reported Newcastle Disease, as have many other countries in the Middle East and Europe. In the past, reports of Newcastle Disease have preceeded H5N1 reports in many counries in Asia. There have been many reports of bird deaths in the Middle East and Europe (see map) The Middle East is also of concern because of indiginous H9N2. Those isolates contain doner sequences for the HA polymorphism S227N which could be formed via recombination with H5N1 wild bird flu and H9N2 found in Israel. There details on the possible Israeli case would be of interest, including the HA sequence of H5N1 in the region.
Extraordinary post.
However, they got their own math wrong (they don't understand exponential growth).
Under their assumptions, 1 index patient does not turn into 1024 patients at the end of 30 days, rather, 1 index patient turns into 59,049 patients. The e-folding time is 2.73 days.
Assuming that everyone on the planet could possibly catch this bug in one form or another, then we reach a 100% infection rate (assuming 7 billion people), in 62 days!!!! That, of course, is a ridiculous number. What would happen in reality is what is known as non-linear saturation, which is a fancy term to mean that the linear relationship would no longer hold and the exponential would also no longer hold. But what we do learn from this, is that if these numbers are correct, this thing will hit the world essentially instantaneously.
The prior models have assumed multiple waves over 1 to 2 years. Assuming these data are correct (I cannot emphasize that enough), we learn that this thing will essentially hit the world instantaneously.
Make sure you are prepared. You won't have much warning. Assuming these data are correct.
The Council on Foreign Relations had another Bird Flu meeting this month, with five different forums. The transcripts are posted on the CFR site, and they are a VERY scary read.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9230/council_on_foreign_relations_conference_on_the_global_threat_of_pandemic_influenza_session_1.html
council on foreign relations - many transcripts to wade thru....
bitt, I can't thank you enough. I asked you to do this so I could take the lately extraordinary step of notifying everyone of this series of CFR articles linked in your post
2127.
This is a very long read, but the information is excellent. If anyone recalls, the CFR had an excellent article last summer on avian flu, as well.
Thanks for the ping.
REALLY scary stuff.
You're welcome.
I wish we could get permission somehow, to print the series here. I just read a comment by Dr. Osterholm in the second article that brought up something I hadn't cosidered before.
Most countries are concerned about the virus mutating to the point where there is efficient human to human spread. Let's just remember how fast SARS got spread from China to Toronto--one man on one flight--and it wrecked Toronto health care and their economy for months. SARS is a virus that doesn't transmit efficiently, but influenza spreads BEFORE symptoms show--you can't screen for it at the border, any border.
Which means, according to Dr. Osterholm, that the first country that announces that it has found efficient human-to-human spread of H5N1 is signing its own death warrant--it becomes a place that the rest of the world will not trade with, enter, or allow citizens to leave.
There are two things that jump out here:
1. Nobody wants to be that country. What lengths would a country go to, to prevent that identification?
2. That COULD be the country that makes our US health care workers' masks, gloves and gowns. Or hypodermics. Or whatever.
And it raises another question: How long does it take a country to confirm that it has efficient H2H transmission of avian flu. At LEAST a week. Can we all do the math ourselves?
Here's a link to some excerpts of the CFR transcripts, I just had to read a couple and copied some bits I thought people might want to read, now I'm not sure why I copied it onto this particular thread... Who knows if the parts I copied actually make sense, it's too late for me to be up:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1528111/posts?page=55#55
Expert says bird flu has killed 300 people in China
Two things concerned me about the conference. One was my overall impression of the meeting. It appeared to me as a layman that most of the participants were really not up to speed about the H5N1 virus. Some of the questions appeared to be totally inane or off the wall.
The second thing that concerned me is the open admission about human transmission of the avian flu. The experts leading the conference admitted H5N1 has been transmitted from person to person. But they chose to focus on the issue of "sustained transmissibilty."
The fact remains the U.N./WHO has not been permitted into avian flu hot spots in China. Military quarantine has been ordered in some regions by Beijing. Which means the experts are debating medical issues in a vacuum.
The experts appear to be discussing using antivirals on both birds and humans. They were switching back and forth at times. I found it most disconcerting. A brief excerpt from the conference transcript:
In the bird population, we've had resistance to the virus by using [antiviral medication] indiscriminately in that case. Oseltamivir ["Tamiflu"}and the other neuraminidase inhibitors basically prevent the virus from being released from the cell. So basically you want to use it in a situation where you want to reduce the potential for spread and reduce the disease. [My comment: In HUMANS !]. It has been shown to reduce severity of symptoms by a day, half a day in terms of treatment, but more importantly, it's really shown that it's been a protective effect -- (inaudible) -- have actually been exposed to the virus.So it appears to me that the experts are saying that Tamiflu will not help someone who has been infected with H5N1. But it may help to protect other family members or persons in close contact with infected persons. In other words, it may help protect medical personnel.(Audio break.)
SUAREZ: Is there a scenario where you can actually make things work by self-prescribing and self-medicating with preparations like that?
WOLINSKY: Absolutely. When we have family clusters, if the -- if one member of the family is actually infected, and we have a number of family members that we want to protect against infection, we don't want to give the drug to the person who's actually infected, believe it or not. We give it to the other family members. If we give it to the person who's infected, it has a high amount of virus replication, and a lot of virus is being put out by -- through respiratory secretions. The chance of getting resistance in that person is very high, and then we lose the protective effect in the other family members.
This is very strange. Because Tamiflu is intended to be used by persons after they have been exposed to the flu. I concluded from my reading, that if you are exposed and begin to show symptoms, taking Tamiflu is useless. I also concluded that medical staff may be required to eat Tamiflu tablets like candy.
No a very hopeful picture being presented at all.
The thing that jumped out to me were the moderater's opening comments:
1. He put everyone on notice that this was going to be in the public record, and comments could be used against the participants. In other words, be very careful what you say, and think about how it will be reported in the news.
2. He defined the framework for discussion right after reminding everyone that this would be in the media: This was to be treated as the classic "insurance" problem. How much should be spent on protection against an unlikely event that will nevertheless be catastrophic if it occurs.
In other words, the official line for public consumption was to be that this is unlikely, regardless of what it might mean if it occurs.
As readers of this thread know, the odds of H5N1 making the jump to easy human to human transmission are actually pretty good. The odds are not 100%, but they are a lot higher than 50/50.
The real questions are WHEN?, and will the easily transmissible version be milder than the versions we are seeing now.
Thank you for the clarification 2ndreconmarine. It is greatly appreciated.
Thanks for the info/links on those chilling CFR transcripts.
And thank you for yours, too...
HALIFAX (CP) - Thirty-six healthy, wild ducks from the Maritime provinces have tested positive for H5 and H7 strains of avian influenza viruses.
Researchers are quick to point out that these results do not indicate any increased threat to human health or commercial poultry flocks. Of 710 birds tested as part of a national wild bird surveillance program, 35 in the Maritime provinces were found to be carrying H5 viruses and one carried an H7 viruses.
Most of the birds were taken from an area along the border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Additional testing needs to be done to identify which strains of H5 viruses were found.
But health officials say it is unlikely the viruses are the same as the virulent H5N1 strain causing widespread outbreaks among birds in southeast Asia. That strain has been blamed for at least 68 human deaths.
The H5 and H7 viruses were the first officials looked for because some viruses of these subtypes are highly pathogenic and can trigger economically devastating outbreaks in domestic poultry. Smaller numbers of birds infected with H5 and H7 viruses have been found in British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec as part of the surveillance program.
The Maritime samples have been sent to the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg to confirm preliminary results and to determine the subtypes of the viruses.
Bird flu outbreaks have continued to spread in Vietnam, while a man suspected of being infected with the virus fled a hospital quarantine unit, state-controlled media reported today.
The southern Mekong Delta province of Long An became the newest area to report bird flu outbreaks among poultry, the Department of Animal Health said on its website.
Outbreaks have been reported in 19 other provinces throughout the country since October, killing or forcing the slaughter of more than 1 million birds, it said.
Meanwhile, a man was admitted yesterday to the General Hospital in southern Tien Giang province with a high fever and difficulty breathing, the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper said. He was transferred to an isolation ward, left to buy personal items and never returned, it said.
The man told doctors he slaughtered his sick chickens a week before falling ill, the newspaper said. Officials in his home province of Ben Tre have been trying to persuade the man to return to the hospital, it said.
In addition, today’s Pioneer newspaper reported that the Ministries of Agriculture and Finance have jointly asked Prime Minister Phan Van Khai to provide financial assistance for farmers in unaffected areas who raise more than 500 poultry to try to lessen their losses.
The proposal comes as more and more people shy away from poultry, making it increasingly difficult for farmers to sell their products.
The ministries also requested rescheduling debts for poultry farmers for one year, it said.
At least 67 people have died from bird flu in Asia since 2003, the bulk of them in Vietnam.
Health experts fear the virus could mutate into a contagious form that spreads easily from person to person. So far, most human cases have been traced to contact with birds.
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=163773644&p=y6377435x
Bird flu has been detected throughout the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, with the country's Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono admitting: "It's very serious. Based on our research, the virus has spread all over the city."
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Bird flu has been detected throughout the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, with the country's Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono admitting: "It's very serious. Based on our research, the virus has spread all over the city."
Excerpted due to copyright (AP)
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=17&art_id=6491&sid=5649406&con_type=1
Recombinomics Commentary
November 25, 2005
The Health Ministry announced Thursday that contrary to an earlier announcement it is possible that an Israeli man hospitalized Saturday at Rebecca Sieff Hospital in Safed may have contracted a virulent strain of the bird flu virus. The man's blood will be further tested both in Israel and England, the ministry said.
On Tuesday the Health Ministry reported that it was examining suspicions that a 57-year-old Galilee resident, hospitalized since the weekend, had contracted bird flu. The man was employed at the Lake Hula nature reserve and his job was to feed the birds there. A test on saliva taken from his pharynx showed that he did not carry the virus, but on Thursday it was revealed that his blood tests raised suspicions that he had the disease, and had probably contracted a virulent strain of the virus.
The above comments suggest that the 57 year old patient has contracted H5N1. A positive H5 antibody at this early date is an indication of significant antibody. If the titer increases four fold, the data will represent confirmation of H5, which would be the first confirmed H5N1 human case outside of Asia.
Although Israel has not reported H5N1 in birds, H5N1 has been reported in OIE reports from Turkey, Romania, and Croatia. Although there have been many reports of dying birds in the Middle east, media reports indicate only Kuwait has confirmed H5N1 in a wild bird (see map).
H5N1 is expected in Israel. H5N1 in wild birds was widely detected in Siberia over the summer. The positive birds were in migratory flight paths that go from Siberia to the Caspian and Black seas in the fall and then to Africa for the winter. During the migration from Europe to Africa, 500 million wild birds fly over Israel and adjacent countries.
H5N1 infections in Isael are of particular concern because H9N2 isolates in Israel contain donor sequences to create S227N in HA. This polymorphism increases HA affinity for human receptors, which would be associated with more efficient transmission to humans. Moreover, all H5N1 wild bird sequences of PB2 contain E627K, which has been associated with increased virulence in mammals as well as the ability to grow the 34 C. The ability of H5N1 to grow at the lower temperature would also increase the efficiency of transmission to the upper respiratory tract.
Thus, it would be useful to test contacts of the patient to identify additional positives and isolate the H5N1 for sequencing. Detection of HA S227N would represent a serious increase in the efficiency of H5N1 to infect humans.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/11250501/H5N1_Israel_S227N.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.