Bird Flu News

Bloomberg's Jason Gale and John Lauerman have been some of the most consistent reporters on the avian flu beat. As a result of developments in Indonesia over the weekend, I'm raising my personal threat level from green to yellow. We may be at that level for some time. Here's a recap:

Bird Flu Deaths Climb as Scientists Probe Human Link (Update3)

May 23 (Bloomberg) -- The number of bird flu deaths reported this month climbed to 13, the most since February 2004, as scientists investigate whether the virus is able to spread more easily between people.

Limited human-to-human transmission can't be ruled out as the cause of illness in seven members of an Indonesian family with avian influenza this month, Indonesia's Ministry of Health said yesterday. Six of the people died. Investigators haven't found infected poultry or pigs near where they lived.

``An extremely high priority should be to determine whether the virus has undergone any significant genetic changes,'' Jennifer McKimm-Breschkin, a virologist at Australia's Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization in Melbourne, said in a phone interview today.

Any evidence that the lethal H5N1 strain of avian flu has increased its ability to spread among humans may prompt the World Health Organization to consider raising its alert level for a human pandemic, a signal that a deadly outbreak of disease is more likely.

Since late 2003, the virus has sickened at least 217 people in 10 countries, killing 123 of them, according to the WHO's May 19 count. In February 2004, the WHO confirmed 12 deaths in Vietnam and seven in Thailand.
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Almost all human H5N1 cases have been linked to close contact with sick or dead birds, such as children playing with them or adults butchering them or taking off feathers, according to the WHO. Thorough cooking of meat and eggs kills the virus.

The WHO's pandemic alert now is at the third of six levels, indicating that a new flu virus subtype is causing disease in humans, though not yet spreading efficiently and in a sustainable way among people.

To raise the alert by one level, the WHO would convene a panel of outside officials. The panel would make a recommendation to acting Director-General Anders Nordstrom, who would then order the change.

The lack of H5N1 infections in nurses and those at risk of contracting the virus from infected people may indicate there is no immediate risk of a pandemic strain evolving, said Albert Osterhaus, the head of the Department of Virology at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in a phone interview yesterday.

``The question is, is the virus going to reassort itself or sequentially mutate so that transmission is eased from human to human?'' he said.

I spoke with the reveres about this earlier today. Flu viruses are genetically reassorting all the time, that's one of the hallmarks of the virus. What that means is that living with flu in the environment is always a volitile situation for those species susceptible to illness.

The Toronto Globe and Mail reports "Businesses not ready for avian flu fallout, expert warns" in Canada.