Flu Season

MOH warns of new bird flu outbreak

AFP , VIENNA
Sunday, Oct 10, 2004,Page 3

Taiwanese Health Minister Chen Chien-Jen warned Friday of the dangers of a new epidemic of bird flu, mostly in Asia but capable of reaching the US and Europe.

"The disease could spread rapidly and an infected person could transmit it to several people at once," he told the European Health Forum at Gastein in Austria, 350km west of Vienna.

"The virus could spread throughout the world, leaving from Asia and reaching the United States and Europe."

He based his hypothesis on the fact that in Thailand "there are suspicions of the first case of human to human bird flu infection."

"If this suspicion is confirmed it will have serious consequences for the whole world," he said.

Thai officials last week confirmed the country's first probable case of human-to-human infection of bird flu following the deaths of a mother and daughter.

Tests are still continuing to try to confirm that the daughter had flu -- she was cremated before full tests could be carried out -- and to discover if the disease had mutated into a more contagious and lethal form that could trigger a wider health crisis.

Chen warned that "already bird flu is a threat to Europe and imports of live poultry from Asian countries are potential risk factors which could result in the spreading of the virus" around the world.

An eight-year-old girl died Sunday of bird flu in northern Thailand, becoming the country's 11th confirmed victim of the lethal virus this year.

She was the third Thai to die during a new wave of outbreaks that started in July.

Worldwide, preparing for bird flu

Keith Bradsher and Lawrence K. Altman NYT

Thursday, September 30, 2004

BANGKOK A day after Thai and international officials confirmed the first probable human-to-human transmission of a virulent strain of avian influenza in this country, public health systems around the globe were scrambling to prepare for a possible pandemic.
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Scientists say they cannot predict how quickly, if at all, the strain may develop the ability to spread easily among people, and whether it will remain as lethal as it has proven so far. The strain, A(H5N1), has killed 30 of the 42 Southeast Asians it infected in the past year, and millions of chickens and wild birds, across wide areas of Asia, and has infected some pigs, household cats and even zoo tigers.
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A handful of cases of human-to-human transmission may have occurred during bird flu outbreaks in Hong Kong in 1997 and in Europe a year ago, but neither resulted in a pandemic.
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Nevertheless, public health experts say it would be irresponsible not to prepare for a worst-case scenario. The so-called Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919 - believed, like the current strain, to have been a mutant virus that jumped from animals - killed an estimated 20 million to 100 million people, and that was before the development of the modern transportation system, with its fleets of jets linking remote areas of the world. By comparison, AIDS has killed an estimated 22 million since 1981, according to the United Nations.
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On Wednesday, the World Health Organization convened a meeting in Geneva of representatives of the drug industry to demand that they speed vaccine production. In the United States, scientists with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are racing to complete a genetic sequence of the virus from the case. If the virus has acquired any mammalian influenza genetic material, it could make it more transmissible.
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The U.S. government has also ordered two million doses of experimental vaccine.
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Health officials would normally look to vaccines and antiviral drugs to control a pandemic, but in this case, those tools have yet to be fully developed and tested. Conventional flu vaccines are not believed to provide any protection against A(H5N1) avian influenza.
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Human trials of the new vaccine ordered by the U.S. government are not expected to begin until the end of this year, at the earliest.
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On Wednesday, the World Health Organization convened a meeting in Geneva of representatives of the drug industry to demand that they speed vaccine production. In the United States, scientists with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are racing to complete a genetic sequence of the virus from the case. If the virus has acquired any mammalian influenza genetic material, it could make it more transmissible

The lethality rate of this flu strain is raising the public health community's collective eyebrows. It is 'way too soon to tell how much of a threat this represents, but last winter we were warned:

Next flu pandemic could wreak global havoc, scientists warn

By Anita Manning, USA TODAY

The warning sirens are screaming: A deadly, contagious strain of flu will emerge, possibly soon, flu experts say, and the world is not ready to deal with it.

Pandemic influenza occurs periodically throughout history, causing widespread illness and death, overwhelming medical systems and wreaking chaos in societies. These viruses are highly contagious, and because they are new, no one is immune.

Influenza is serious enough, killing an average of 36,000 people in the USA every year, but because it is caused by strains of the virus that are known to be circulating in the world, vaccines can be prepared to prevent it. This year, a strain that doesn't match up exactly with those in the vaccine has emerged and raised serious concerns, but experts believe the vaccine will still offer some protection.

Using current technologies, it takes as long as six months to create flu vaccines.

"The world will be in deep trouble if the impending influenza pandemic strikes this week, this month, or even this year," write international flu experts Richard Webby and Robert Webster of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.

I'll continue to track this story. This year's flu shot (of which we are short half of the supply we were supposed to have) will do nothing against this bug.