Avian Flu - What we need to know

Russian official claims country free of bird flu

There are currently no known bird flu cases in Russian agricultural enterprises and private farms, the Russian agriculture minister told a news conference Thursday.

"Not a single industrial agricultural site or private farm is currently infected with the bird flu virus," Aleksei Gordeyev said. "There is no bird flu in the country," he said.

Source. The fact that there were no new reported cases in poultry farms is certainly good news. The broader claim that there is no bird flu anywhere in Russia is silly. Just last week there were widespread reports of swans dying in central Russia from bird flu.

Russia's latest outbreak

Over 1,000 specialists from veterinary services, the Ministry for Emergency Situations and law enforcement agencies were sent on Wednesday to the Volga River delta, where mass deaths of bird flu have been registered among swans, Astakhan Region governor Alexander Zhilkin told reporters on Wednesday.

According to the governor, their task “is to prevent direct contacts between humans and infected fowl, as well as to take preventive measures, carry out explanatory work among the population, prevent poaching and fowl hunting.”

“We have got official confirmation that bird flu was the reason behind swan deaths, and the main task at the present moment is to make sure that humans don’t contract the disease,” the governor stressed.

Quarantine has been imposed in the section of the Volga River delta where mass deaths of swans have been registered, as well as within a 30-kilometer radius from it. According to updated reports of the regional department of the Ministry for Emergency Situations, 210 swans died in the Krylatskoye-Barazdinskoye section of the Volga delta from November 14 to 22.

Read more here. The Russian Parliament today passed a set of emergency measures to fight the spread of bird flu.

Bird flu widespread in Russia

Russia has discovered outbreaks of avian flu in 10 areas, and 19 more are under suspicion, agriculture ministry officials were quoted by the Itar-Tass agency as saying on Tuesday.

Among the areas affected are southern Siberia’s Altai and Omsk regions, the south Urals’ Kurgan region, neighboring Chelyabinsk and in central Russia’s Tambov regions as well as the Tula region south of Moscow.

“Three more areas in the Kurgan region and 16 in the (southern Siberian) Novosibirsk region are under suspicion,” the ministry added.

Source.

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.

New outbreak in Russia

The latest incident of bird flu in European Russia killed 12 hens at a private dacha, after which authorities culled 53 ducks and hens at the locality and imposed a quarantine.

The outbreak was in Tambov, 400 km (250 miles) southeast of Moscow last week, a senior regional animal health official said on Monday.

"Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of the H5N1 strain (of bird flu) ... in some dead fowl tissue samples," the official told Reuters.

From Reuters. The same article has the latest story from Malta:

In Malta, authorities sealed a ship at Malta Freeport and put its crew in quarantine after dead birds were seen aboard.

State television said the ship was coming from Taiwan, which last week found the H5N1 virus in a container of birds smuggled from China, its first case for two years.

Bad news from China and Russia

China reported a fresh outbreak of a deadly strain of bird flu on Wednesday amid new reports of the avian illness in Russia, Romania and Macedonia.

China's state news agency, Xinhua, reported Wednesday that 2,600 birds died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the country's northern region.

Xinhua said the birds were discovered in a breeding facility near the village of Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. The news agency didn't provide any details other than to say that the "epidemic is under control."

[...] In neighbouring Russia, agricultural officials are waiting for final confirmation of the H5N1 strain in wild ducks near Moscow. Hundreds of birds died suddenly in the country's Tula region, about 200 kilometres south of the capital.

If the tests are positive, it would be the first time the virus has shown up west of the Ural Mountains, in what is European Russia. Authorities have already killed 60,000 birds to stop the spread of the disease.

Story.

How did bird flu get to Russia?

The typical story is that wild migratory birds carried the flu from China. A new article challenges this view, claiming that "the timing and distribution of the reported spread of H5N1 ... does not fit any known migratory pattern for any species". The alternative theory:

The article argues instead that the disease was more likely spread by the unrestricted movement of domesticated poultry, or even illegal trade in fighting cocks.

This view is also supported by research by Dennis Alexander in the journal Veterinary Microbiology. He argues that although wild birds may carry many types of flu and may infect agricultural birds, it is human movement of birds through farming, slaughter and trade that accelerates its spread.

Read the entire controversial piece here.

Flu virus in Russia sensitive to amantadine?

As we scramble to buy Tamiflu, there are signs that the highly infectious form of bird flu moving across Russia towards Europe may be sensitive to the older, cheaper drug amantadine (symmetrel), according to Chemistry & Industry magazine.

If the virus does prove to be sensitive to amantadine, this could overcome potential shortages of Tamiflu and Relenza on which many countries have pinned their hopes of combating a possible pandemic.

Henry Niman founder of US biotechnology company Recombinomics says preliminary sequence data suggest that the Russian virus does not exhibit any of the changes in the M2 ion channel that would make it resistant to amantadine. Early work on the Russian virus also suggests that it is related to the Qinghai virus. Yi Guan of the University of Hong Kong who sequenced the Qinghai strain earlier this year says Qinghai sequence data suggest it is amantadine sensitive.

The story comes from Medical News Today.

Russia continues to struggle with flu

Russia is stepping up measures to contain the spread of the deadly bird flu virus amid signs the outbreak is stabilizing, Reuters reported Thursday quoting Russia’s chief epidemiologist, but Kazakhstan said it was probing possible new cases.

“Deaths of wild fowl continue to occur, although less intensively,” Gennady Onishchenko, head of Russia’s state consumer rights watchdog and top epidemiologist, told reporters.

Read the entire article here. One of the latest measures taken by the government is to ban bird hunting.

The spread of bird flu to Europe

According to UN officials the Balkans may be the gateway for bird flu in Europe:

Millions of birds migrate each year to Black Sea neighbours Romania and Bulgaria for the milder winter climate, making the area a potential gateway to central Europe for the bird flu virus, which has already swept into Russia from southeast Asia.

[...] "Knowing the flyways and the bird species that use them, there is a high likelihood that the virus will continue to spread as it has so far," Jutzi, Director of the Animal and Production and Health Division of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation, told Reuters.

"Particularly in the southeastern part of the Balkans, given that these flyways go down there ... It is quite probable in the future and is a major concern for us."