Posts tagged bird

Details of a genetically altered strain of the deadly avian flu virus are “a grave concern” to public safety and should be kept under wraps, a federal advisory board declared Tuesday.

In a letter released by the journals Science and Nature, the 23-member National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity said the data behind a new strain of the virus can be used to help prepare for a possible future outbreak. But the board recommended the researchers’ findings be published without “methods or details” that could be used by terrorists to produce a biological weapon.

“This is an unprecedented recommendation for work in the life sciences, and our analysis was conducted with careful consideration both of the potential benefits of publication and of the potential harm that could occur from such a precedent,” the panel wrote. “Our concern is that publishing these experiments in detail would provide information to some person, organization or government that would help them to develop similar mammal-adapted influenza A/H5N1 viruses for harmful purposes.”

The letter restates concerns first raised in December, after reports that scientists in Wisconsin and the Netherlands each created a strain of the influenza virus that is both highly lethal and easily transmitted between ferrets — the animals that most closely mimic the human response to the flu.

A paper by the Dutch researchers was to be published in the journal Science, while the University of Wisconsin study was to be published in the journal Nature. Both journals have already agreed to postpone publication. But airing detailed results “represent(s) a grave concern for global biosecurity, biosafety, and public health,” the NSABB concluded.

“Although scientists pride themselves on the creation of scientific literature that defines careful methodology that would allow other scientists to replicate experiments, we do not believe that widespread dissemination of the methodology in this case is a responsible action,” they wrote.

But researchers involved in the bird-flu studies say censoring their papers would make it harder for scientists to share information while doing little to deter potential terrorists.

“The logic in this work is sufficiently obvious that virologists could perform experiments similar to ours even if our method is not published,” the Dutch team wrote in Science last week.

Scientists and public health officials have long feared that the Asian bird flu virus, which now rarely infects people, could become a human-to-human disease. The flu has killed about 60% of the people who have contracted it since its discovery in 1997.

(Source: CNN)

AT least 10,000 ducks will have to be destroyed to contain an outbreak of bird flu at two Victorian farms.

The virus found in birds on the two properties is a low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) and not the deadlier form of the virus that spread through Asia, threatening humans and leading to a mass cull of poultry.

Dr Andrew Cameron, the state’s chief veterinary officer, says there is no risk to the community, but authorities had to act quickly to quarantine the two properties run by a company north of Melbourne to remove any chance the virus could spread.

“This is all about making sure that the virus doesn’t one day in the future evolve and mutate into a more serious form,” he said.

The source of the latest outbreak has not been confirmed, but officials believe the virus could have been introduced from wild waterfowl known to harbour influenza viruses.

The Department of Primary Industries will work with the farm owner to dispose of all the ducks and disinfect the farms, he said.

The discovery of the virus came from routine testing that is conducted regularly in the hopes of catching outbreaks before they get out of hand.

Bird flu, also known as avian influenza or AI, is a contagious disease that affects all kinds of poultry.

Dr Cameron said transmission of the virus from birds to humans is very uncommon and this recent outbreak was the first time this particular subtype of the virus had been found in Australian poultry.

“It is a rare event, and we want to absolutely make sure it stays that way,” he said.

Control of the disease is taking place under a nationally agreed framework which involves industry, the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments.

An incident management team has been assembled and is tracking all movements to and from the infected farms and surrounding areas.

The two farms are about 25km apart in an area north of Melbourne, but officials are keeping the exact location private.

Three previous Australian outbreaks of avian influenza in Victoria - the most recent in 1992 - have been successfully eradicated.

(Source: news.com.au)

A man in south-west China who contracted the bird flu virus died on Sunday, health authorities said, the second human death from the virulent disease in the country in just under a month.

The news comes after neighbouring Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia also reported deaths from avian influenza, and after chickens tested positive for the H5N1 virus in Hong Kong, prompting a mass cull of birds.

The latest Chinese victim fell ill on January 6 and was admitted to hospital in Guiyang - capital of Guizhou province - where his condition rapidly deteriorated, the provincial health department said in a statement.

Tests on the patient before he died confirmed he had contracted the H5N1 virus, it added.

“So far, 71 people who had close contact with the victim have not developed abnormal symptoms,” the health department said.

He is the second man to die from bird flu in China in less than a month, after a bus driver in the southern province of Guangdong passed away from the disease on December 31.

The latest death brings to 28 the number of people in China who have died from the disease - which is fatal in humans in about 60 per cent of cases - since 2003, out of 42 reported human cases.

The Hong Kong Department of Health said in a statement on Sunday it had been notified of the case by the mainland’s health authorities, which said the patient was 39 years old.

Authorities from Hong Kong and the mainland have been working closely together since three chickens in the Chinese territory tested positive for the H5N1 virus in mid-December.

Most human infections are the result of direct contact with infected birds, and the virus does not pass easily among humans.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says it has never identified a “sustained human-to-human spread” of the virus since it re-emerged in 2003.

But according to the Hong Kong health department, the Guizhou province victim, who has not been named, had not reported any obvious exposure to poultry before the onset of symptoms.

Aside from China, Vietnam on Thursday reported its first human death from the virus in nearly two years, and the disease also claimed the life of a toddler in Cambodia.

Indonesia, meanwhile, on Friday reported its second human death from bird flu this year when a five-year-old girl who recently lost her relative to the deadly virus also passed away.

China is considered one of the nations most at risk of bird flu epidemics because it has the world’s biggest poultry population and many chickens in rural areas are kept close to humans.

But the Guizhou health department sought to ease concerns on Sunday, saying bird flu was “preventable, controllable and treatable”.

AFP

(Source: abc.net.au)

A man in southern China has died of bird flu a week after being admitted to hospital with a fever, state media reports.

The 39-year-old bus driver from Guangdong province contracted the first human case of bird flu in China in 18 months.

The man from Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, developed symptoms last week and was admitted to a hospital on Christmas Day because of severe pneumonia, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The report added the man died in the early afternoon on Saturday (local time), after having tested positive for the H5N1 virus.

Guangdong’s official newspaper, the Southern Daily, said 120 people who had contact with the man had developed no signs of sickness.

About 10 days ago Hong Kong culled 17,000 chickens at a wholesale poultry market and suspended all imports of live chickens from mainland China for 21 days after a dead chicken there tested positive for the H5N1 virus.

The virus is normally found in birds but can jump to people who do not have immunity to it.

Researchers worry it could mutate into a form that would spread around the world and kill millions.

In recent years, the virus has become active in various parts of the world, mainly in east Asia, during the cooler months.

Authorities in China are worried about the spread of infectious diseases around this time when millions of Chinese travel in crowded buses and trains across the country to go home to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

The current strain of H5N1 is highly pathogenic, kills most species of birds and up to 60 per cent of the people it infects.

Since 2003, it has infected 573 people around the world, killing 336.

The virus also kills migratory birds but species that manage to survive can carry and disperse the virus to new, uninfected locations.

It transmits less easily between people but there have been clusters of infections in people in Indonesia and Thailand in the past.

Reuters/AFP

(Source: abc.net.au)