South Korea Killing Dogs, Cats & Pigs to Prevent Spread of Bird Flu

Quarantine officials began the slaughter Tuesday even though international health experts have questioned killing non-poultry species to curtail bird flu's spread, saying there is no scientific evidence to suggest dogs, cats or pigs can pass the virus to humans.
Since ravaging Asia's poultry in late 2003, the H5N1 virus has killed at least 153 people worldwide. Infections among people have been traced to contact with infected birds, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between humans, leading to a human pandemic.
South Korean officials insist the decision to slaughter dogs, cats and pigs was not unusual and that the step has been taken in other countries without public knowledge.

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Bird flu Virus Now Mutating

Detailed data on clustered human cases of avian flu have experts agreeing that the H5N1 virus is evolving – but in what direction? “The virus is always changing, and the mutations that make it more compatible with human transmission may occur at any time,” warn Drs. Webster and Govorkova, both virologists at St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. However, another expert believes that, so far, H5N1 has given no indication it is mutating toward human-to-human transmission. “It’s far from a certainty,” said Dr. Marc Siegel, a clinical associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine, and author of Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic. “The virus could move closer to human-to - human transmission, and it could move farther away. I don’t think that you can conclude from these articles in the NEJM that the thing is becoming easier to transmit.” The two studies’ most basic data is not new. They focus on three clusters of H5N1 infection in Indonesia in mid-to-late 2005, involving four deaths, and an eight-patient cluster treated in the first weeks of 2006 at a hospital in far-eastern Turkey where four of the Turkish patients died.

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Washington Orders More Bird Flu Vaccine

WASHINGTON — The government ordered enough vaccine Monday to protect an additional 2.7 million people against bird flu, adding to a stockpile for use in an outbreak of the deadly virus.
The $199 million in contracts went to three companies _ Novartis AG, Sanofi-Pasteur and GlaxoSmithKline PLC _ for 5.3 million doses of vaccine. Two of the 90-microgram doses are required to vaccinate a single person against the deadly Asian bird flu known as H5N1.
When delivered, the newly ordered bird flu vaccines will roughly double the existing stockpile, which now has enough vaccine for about 3 million people. The government plans to eventually buy enough vaccine for 20 million people, including emergency and health care workers.
"Having a stockpile of influenza vaccine that may offer protection against the H5N1 virus is an important part of our pandemic influenza preparedness plan," said Mike Leavitt, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Researchers are studying techniques that would reduce the amount of antigen _ the substance that prompts the body's immune system to respond to the virus _ in each vaccine. Using less of the active ingredient could stretch supplies and enable the vaccination of millions more people.
The bulk of Monday's order went to Sanofi-Pasteur for 3.7 million doses, under a $118 million contract.
The government said last week that some of the bird flu vaccine it stockpiled earlier is growing weaker with age. It's not known how long vaccines in the existing stockpile would remain viable.

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Scientist Cooperate To Prevent Bird Flu Pandemic

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A prominent Chinese health expert has called on scientists in Hong Kong and China to cooperate and conduct joint research to prevent a flu pandemic, a pro-Beijing newspaper reported.
The call comes after China's Ministry of Agriculture and Chinese scientists criticized scientists in Hong Kong and the United States in recent weeks for publishing a study saying that a new, vaccine-resistant strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus had emerged in China.
Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory disease expert based in China's southern Guangdong province, told the Ta Kung Pao newspaper that both sides must communicate.
"China and Hong Kong are one family and they may be facing a dangerous co-explosion of the common flu and avian flu in coming days. I hope there can be more co-ordination, sharing of information in the future," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday.

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Potential human pandemic- H5N1 Bird Flu

Health professionals are concerned that the continued, rapid spread of the highly pathogenic avian H5N1 virus across eastern Asia and other countries represents a significant threat to human health. The H5N1 virus has raised concerns about a potential human pandemic because:

It is especially virulent and has caused severe disease in humans who have become infected

There has already been limited human-to-human transmission in Southeast Asia

It could evolve to become readily transmissible in humans

No human H5N1 vaccine is commercially available, despite continual advances in vaccine technology

Supplies of expensive antiviral medicines are very limited

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As journalist Galen McBride summed it up for Pandemic Flu Awareness Week (Oct. 9-15), "A pandemic will occur if the H5N1 avian flu virus, currently circulating in more than 50 countries on three continents, mutates to acquire the ability to transmit efficiently from human to human. Flu viruses mutate millions of times a day and this virus has already achieved limited human-to-human (H2H) transmission as acknowledged by the World Health Organization (WHO)."

New Bird Flu Strain Spreads Quickly!

A new bird flu strain has emerged in China and is spreading quickly. This is very Serious.
The spread is rapidly plowing through poultry in Southeast Asia.Human infections caused by this new strain have also turned up in many different locations. These include farms, urban centers, etc. This raises fears that a worldwide flu pandemic could occur and kill millions.
The new strain is vaccine-sensitive. This means that existing animal vaccines are less effective against it.
"This virus seemed to spread very fast over a big geographic region," said Yi Guan, director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong in China.
"However, we don't have any evidence to show whether this virus is more dangerous or less dangerous than any other H5N1 [bird flu] viruses," Guan said.

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