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Fresh outbreak in North West Pakistan
20/06/08
Authorities have culled nearly 2000 broiler chickens following confirmation of a fresh outbreak of avian influenza in Pakistan 's North West Frontier Province (NWFP).The culling was carried out in the Swabi district on Sunday [22 Jun 2008] after samples taken at a poultry farm tested positive for deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu at a laboratory in the capital Islamabad , English-language The News daily said. Two-third of the birds at the farm, which had more than 6000 chickens, died during the last few days while the rest were killed and buried under the supervision of local authorities and UN's World Health Organization (WHO) staff. Pakistan 's poultry population has seen multiple outbreaks of the H5N1 strain since 2006, with almost 80 outbreaks taking place last year [2007].
New Avian Influenza vaccine in Australia
19/06/08
Australian vaccine company, CSL, this week had their new H5N1 avian influenza vaccine, called Panvax, approved for registration by the TGA. Panvax is a new vaccine against avian influenza of strains H5N1. It is intended for use in the prevention of influenza caused by a pandemic strain of H5N1avian influenza virus. In the event of a pandemic caused by this strain, CSL will rapidly gear up to manufacturing levels to supply all Australians against this strain avian flu, but this will take some time, and vaccination programs will not occur for several weeks after the start of a pandemic.
Panvax is a vaccine that can be used only when an influenza pandemic has been officially declared by the Australian Government in consultation with the World Health Organisation.
More importantly, it would only be used if a pandemic was caused by H5N1 avian virus, or a very closely related H5 avian virus.
It would not be effective if the next pandemic is caused by an avian strain of H& or H9, nor any other novel strain. It is unknown what strain may cause the next pandemic.
Three randomised, double blind clinical studies were conducted in Australia to assess the immunogenicity and/or safety of the vaccine in adults aged 18 to 64 years, and older adults aged 65 years and over. The vaccine, administered as a two-dose regimen, was found to be safe and well tolerated.
Hong Kong and Guandong battling with bird flu outbreaks
18/06/08
An outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in poultry in Hong Kong food markets has led to the culling of live poultry across the city. According to government officials the bird flu virus was detected at a poultry stall in one of Hong Kong 's numerous wet markets and as a result 2700 birds were culled. But the virus has now spread among the island's poultry population and mass cullings have been conducted as a precaution to try to control the spread of the virus. Officials say that all wet market stores and fresh food stores selling live poultry are now infected areas and all poultry will be culled, but poultry on local farms is not said to be affected. The outbreak of the virus, the 1st in Hong Kong wet markets in 5 years, has prompted Hong Kong authorities to suspend live poultry imports from mainland China . This year there have been a number of outbreaks of bird flu among migrating birds in the territory, which are the suspected culprits in spreading the disease worldwide
China on Tuesday [17 Jun 2008] reported a bird flu outbreak in ducks in the southern province of Guangdong , close to Hong Kong where poultry at all commercial markets was culled last week. The Guangdong outbreak, in a village administered by Jiangmen city, was 1st detected on 13 Jun 2008, the official Xinhua news agency said. The National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory confirmed on Tuesday that the virus the birds contracted was a subtype of the H5N1 strain, Xinhua quoted the Ministry of Agriculture as saying. A total of 3873 ducks died of the disease and a further 17 127 were culled as part of a contingency plan that the report said had effectively contained the outbreak.17/06/08
Current vaccines against the viruses causing human flu are ineffective against the viruses which cause avian flu and those vaccines in use in some countries to control avian flu outbreaks do not have an effect on humans. The possibility of a change in the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus which will allow it to cause human flu in epidemic or pandemic form has led to a great deal of research and to the development of a number of candidate vaccines now in various stages of development internationally. Even if a vaccine is produced which is efficient and safe the main difficulty in controlling an epidemic will be the ability to produce sufficient of the vaccine within a short enough time. A paper published in the July 12 2008 edition of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine reports on the encouraging results obtained from the first clinical trial of a vaccine produced by the Baxter Bioscience company laboratories in the Czech republic which yielded a high rate of protective antibodies against different strains (clades) of the H5N1 virus but which also used a technique which could result in rapid mass production of the vaccine.
Most H5N1 vaccines tested so far have been produced by the conventional method of growing a genetically modified virus in chicken eggs. The Baxter vaccine is grown in a cell-culture medium said to increase both speed and flexibility allowing the composition to be modified rapidly should there be emergence of a new strain of virus. It is derived from an inactivated wild “whole cell” virus. There is some evidence that whole-virus vaccines may be more immunogenic than split-virus or subunit vaccines; and producing them takes fewer steps - it is calculated that cell-culture technology would permit mass production of a vaccine within 12 weeks from the time a pandemic flu virus is identified versus 22 weeks for egg-based technology.
The question has been raised as to whether large-scale production of vaccine from a wild-type H5N1 virus would be safe, but the experience in using wild-type poliovirus to make vaccines is reassuring and the closed systems used to protect vaccines' sterility "greatly limit the opportunities for spread” according to a perspective comment accompanying the trial report. Despite the promising results of this trial experts continue to caution that the world is still a long way from having the capability of making an effective vaccine quickly enough and in sufficient quantity to protect most people in the event of a pandemic.
Hong Kong begins bird cull as H5N1 avian virus spreads
12/06/08
Reuters has reported that Hong Kong government ordered a cull of poultry across all the city's markets on Wednesday in a bid to stop the spread of the H5N1 virus between birds scattered across the territory. It said that o fficials last week found the bird flu virus at a poultry stall in one of the city's many so-called wet markets and ordered the culling of 2,700 birds over the week.
Government officials said on Wednesday the virus had since spread among the island's poultry population. "We have not found any dead chickens with the virus -- not yet. We have not had any human cases," said Cheng Siu-hing, director of agriculture, fisheries and conservation.
"Of course, we cannot be complacent. That is why we're now taking decisive measures to close all remaining outlets and to cull all remaining live poultry." Officials on Wednesday estimated there were 3,500 live birds remaining at roughly 470 stores, stalls or markets across Hong Kong as of Tuesday evening. But they stressed that no evidence of H5N1 had so far been found on farms or among wholesale live-chicken distributors.
The virus was discovered in a market in the city's Sham Shui Po neighbourhood last week, in the northern district of Kowloon, but health officials later found traces of the virus in the more remote New Territories and on the main island itself, home to much of the city's commerce and retail. Hong Kong had banned poultry imports from mainland China for 21 days since the first instance of the virus was discovered over the weekend, as well as from local farms in the territory.
The H7 avian influenza virus
12/06/08
Recent research suggests that the H7 strain of avian influenza virus which causes a mild form of flu in birds is adapting to a form able to attach to human respiratory cells. See Medical page on this website for more...
First human case of bird flu confirmed in Bangladesh
Bangladesh has reported a case of human infection with H5N1 virus. The patient was a toddler in Dhaka who became ill in January and has since recovered. The diagnosis has only now been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control in the USA .
Bangladesh has set up isolation units at all public hospitals across the country, and officials said the government had taken adequate safety measures to tackle any new human cases of bird flu. The country was first hit by bird flu in February 2007 near Dhaka and again in January this year when the disease spread to about 50 of the country's 64 districts. More than a million birds were slaughtered, but the outbreaks began to subside in March as temperatures rose. In the last 40 days there has been only one outbreak in a farm in northern Bangladesh
Following the notification of a second H5N1 outbreak in South Korea 's capital authorities have ordered the culling of all poultry and 15,000 chickens, ducks, pheasants and turkeys have been destroyed. In Busan , South Korea 's second largest city an outbreak has been reported for the first time.
More problems in South Korea
05/05/08
Bird flu outbreaks in Korea are spreading to Korea 's southeast as poultry deaths from the H5 virus were reported in the cities of Busan and Daegu this past week [28 Apr - 2 May 2008]. The cases came one day
after 2 new cases were confirmed 1 May in Ulsan and Yeongcheon.. The most recent confirmed outbreaks mean the bird flu that started at a Gimje farm in the Jeolla province of southwestern Korea at the beginning of April 2008 is now spreading southeast. Since the start of this outbreak in Gimje in early April 31 confirmed cases have been found in Jeolla, Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, and Gyeongsang provinces, prompting the slaughter of more than 6.4 million chickens and ducks.
