Avian Flu - What we need to know

Weekend news

Here are some of the stories making headlines in the past two days:

• A new H5N1 outbreak was confirmed in Thai chicken.
• A second series of tests from birds on the Greek island of Chios returned negative.
• In Romania, a swan and a goose that died in the Danube Delta tested positive for the H5 virus.
• Tests on chicken at a Japanese farm near Tokyo showed the birds had antibodies for the H5 strain of flu. 82,000 chicken were going to be culled.
• Turkey culled 750 chickens on Sunday in the village of Akbaslar (Bursa province) following the sudden death of other birds in the region. Test were pending, it was not confirmed this was bird flu.
• The WHO is asking China for more information on the death of a 12 year old girl. The girl was initially thought to have bird flu, but Chinese authorities eventually declared she had died from pneumonia. The girl's brother is also sick, but in stable condition.

DNA vaccines?

They would be quicker to make and more flexible; here is a recent article from Wired. 

Vaccine update

Chiron won a $62.5 million federal contract Thursday to help produce a vaccine to counter the threat of a bird-flu pandemic.

The contract is the second-largest award for bird-flu vaccines announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Last month, the agency awarded $100 million to Sanofi-Aventis of France.

Source. Also in the news, GLAXOSMITHKLINE claims it is close to an H5N1 vaccine:

Glaxo also said it will start tests on humans within weeks for its prototype pandemic vaccine, which uses the H5N1 bird flu strain spreading from Asia to Europe, and will file for regulatory approval immediately if the trials are successful.

[...] Jean-Pierre Garnier, Glaxo's chief executive, said the company had found a way of using an adjuvant, or additive, to expand the amount of vaccine from a given batch of antigen.

"We've been at it for several years now, and this gives us good hope for the last bit that remains to be done to come up with a 'shotgun' vaccine on H5N1, " he said.

Glaxo. which is also expanding flu vaccine factory capacity, will start clinical tests of its prototype H5N1 vaccine within weeks, and expects to have results available in the second quarter of next year, allowing it to file for regulatory approval later in 2006.

"Once the vaccine is approved we will be able to produce very large quantities, " Garnier said.

Read more at Red Nova.

That's the spirit!

"In a two-week term the bird flu topic in Russia will be completely closed and forgotten", such a consoling declaration was made by Russia's Agriculture Minister Aleksey Gordeyev in a meeting with media in the Republic of Chuvashia Friday.

Source.

Bird flu fears and Trojan viruses

Virus writers, forever in search of opportunities to distribute their malicious code, are exploiting interest in the avian flu by circulating an e-mail with an attachment that contains information about the bird flu epidemic -- and a Trojan horse tucked inside.

[...] The Naiva.A Trojan horse masquerades as a Word document with subject lines such as "Outbreak in North America" and "What is avian influenza (bird flu)?"

The Trojan horse uses two Word macros to run and install a second threat on the computer. The first macro enables the Trojan horse to modify, create and delete files. The second macro installs Ranky.FY on computers. Ranky.FY allows hackers to gain remote control of infected computers.

Panda Software urges users to set their macro security level at medium to receive a warning when a macro is run, or on high to stop macros from running altogether.

The Naiva-A Trojan comes on the heels of numerous spam e-mail distributions that promote the sale of Tamiflu, the drug believed to be most effective at protecting humans for the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.

Here is the full article, and this is the virus description at Panda Software.

Roche stops Tamiflu shipments to US

Tamiflu's maker, Roche Holding AG in Switzerland, said Thursday it was temporarily suspending U.S. shipment because of increased global demand. Company officials have previously said they are limiting supplies to pharmacies to thwart hoarding.

But there are signs that is happening.

"We've seen recently some very large purchases at the wholesale level, companies or large entities who are possibly hoarding Tamiflu right now," said Darien Wilson, spokeswoman at Roche's U.S. offices in Nutley, N.J.

Prescriptions for the drug last week were nearly quadruple what they were a year before, according to Verispan, a Pennsylvania-based company that monitors pharmacy sales. Some health departments and doctors' groups are urging consumers, doctors and even school districts not to stockpile the drug.

[...] "The priority is that there is enough Tamiflu for the people who need it at the start of the influenza season," said Roche spokesman Alexander Klauser. "At the moment, there is no influenza currently circulating."

Source. Roche stated it would continue to fill government orders.

Indonesia to recruit students for flu monitoring

Indonesia plans to recruit about 1,000 students from four universities to boost surveillance of avian influenza as a United Nations agency asked the government to show more urgency to control the virus in the nation.

[...] The government needs to create a chain of command to help in reporting the spread and measures to tackle the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which has killed four people in the Southeast Asian nation, said Roeder, who is heading FAO's team to stem the spread of the disease in birds in Indonesia.

``I don't sense enough urgency about the situation,'' Roeder said. ``Heavy human population and all keeping poultry in the backyard situation has just provided wall-to-wall chickens for this virus to move around.''

[...] While Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago deploys 1,000 students for surveillance, neighboring Thailand will deploy 900,000 volunteers to perform house-to-house checks for signs of bird flu, local media reported Health Minister Suchai Charoenratanakul as saying Oct. 24.

Thailand will ``X-ray'' 21 provinces for signs of bird flu, Agriculture Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said in a statement on Oct. 22. Thailand has declared a nationwide ban on the movement of poultry and ordered farmers to report cases of dead fowl, she said yesterday.

The Indonesian government and the FAO are appealing for help to fund compensation. Lack of adequate compensation discourages the reporting of outbreaks, the World Health Organization said in a report on Sept. 2. The virus has killed at least four people in Jakarta and surrounding areas.

From Bloomberg.

How did communities fare in the 1918 pandemic?

"Most communities were woefully unprepared for the health crisis they faced," said Higgins, who is focusing his research efforts on the ability of Pennsylvania cities to respond. "Those cities that passed muster, relatively speaking, had been building a strong medical infrastructure for decades, and had sound public health policies based more upon science than politics.  I'm not sure that's the case today."

Wise words, read more here.

Girl dies in Hunan province

A 12-year-old girl died suffering flu-like symptoms in a village in central China where the mainland's third outbreak of bird flu in a week has been confirmed, the South China Morning Post said on Thursday.

He Yin and her 10-year-old brother fell ill about a week ago after eating a sick chicken that had died, the Post said, quoting their father, He Tieguang.

"We had dead chickens before and nobody has ever got sick because of that. So I thought it's okay," her father was quoted as saying.

So far there was no evidence linking her death to the outbreak of bird flu in the village in Hunan province and none of the adults in her family had shown any flu symptoms, the paper said. Doctors told her family she had died from fever.

The newspaper did not say when the girl died.

China has said the Hunan outbreak had been brought under control.

Farmers in the village of Wantang said many birds suddenly died about 10 days ago, the newspaper said.

Source.

Follow up: Chinese authorities now say the girl died of pneumonia, not bird flu.

Visitor to Thailand tests positive for H5N1

Preliminary tests conducted on a 43-year-old man who returned to the Indian Ocean French island of Reunion after a trip to Thailand indicated he may have the H5N1 bird flu virus, authorities said Wednesday.

Two initial tests for the deadly H5N1 strain were conducted Monday on the man's nose and throat, after he developed a cough. "The first was doubtful, the second positive," Reunion authorities said in a statement.

"There is thus a suspicion of flu of avian origin, although the symptoms are not very significant," the statement said. Bird flu is difficult to diagnose properly in preliminary tests, and false positives are not uncommon.

The man was hospitalised on Reunion with a fever and strong headaches Saturday, three days after spending a week in Thailand. He was being kept under observation and being given antiviral treatments while awaiting further test results, expected before the end of the week, the statement said.

It said 19 other people took the same trip to Thailand and have been questioned about their health. Among them, two have flu symptoms and were also being tested.

Source. Read Recombinomics' reaction here.