Bird flu suspected of human-to-human spread

[Spellbound]

Sky news in the UK have within the last minute 09.05am Sunday 01.02.04 have just cut into normal new flow about bird flu. They stated that human-human transmission has been confirmed in Vietnam.

Sky news showing big red (News Flash banner at bottom of TV screen) stating human-human bird flu.

Will post more later as the news develops here.

[Spellbound]

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1121690,00.html

HUMAN TRANSMISSION FEAR OVER BIRD FLU

Human-to-human transmission of bird flu is a "possible explanation" for the deaths of two sisters in Vietnam, the World Health Organisation says.

More follows . .

[george]

Bird flu suspected of human-to-human spread

HANOI (Reuters) - Two sisters in Vietnam have died after contracting bird flu and they may have caught the virus from their brother, who had also died, the World Health Organisation says.

If confirmed on Sunday, the deaths could be the first recorded human-to-human transmissions of the virus in the current epidemic, which has spread to 10 countries across Asia.

The sisters, aged 23 and 30, both died on January 23, a statement from the U.N. agency said. Their brother died before them from respiratory illness, but no samples were available from him for testing. Six other people in Vietnam have died from bird flu.

While the source of infection for the two sisters cannot be conclusively identified, "WHO considers that limited human-to-human transmission, from the brother to the sisters, is one possible explanation," the statement said.

--Reuters 2004-02-01

[Guest IT Manager]

Wonder where in all this, Monsanto etc have made their mark. It worries me enormously, especially after just having watched "CORE", about a screw-up by The Defence Department.

[mrentoul]

I thought ''Core'' was fiction...a sci-fi movie, in fact. This may not be.

[Spellbound]

NEW BIRD FLU FEARS

Human-to-human transmission of bird flu is a "possible explanation" for the deaths of two sisters in Vietnam, the World Health Organisation has said.

It is not known how the girls caught the virus but it is not thought close contact with poultry was to blame.

If true, it would be the first time humans have passed the virus to each other and would be a big blow to attempts to stem the Asian-wide outbreak.

"Limited human-to-human transmission from the brother to his sisters is one possible explanation," said Bob Dietz, a WHO spokesman in Hanoi.

At least 10 people have been killed by bird flu after catching it from poultry.

Ten countries in all are known to have suffered outbreaks.

Limited human-to-human transmission of the virus is not the real danger.

Experts fear the the virus mutating into a form that passes easily between people - a pandemic strain that is a hybrid of the bird virus and a normal human influenza variety.

Tests comparing the genetic makeup of the virus found in the two sisters with that seen in other people are being conducted in Hong Kong and results are expected in the next few days.

Last Updated: 11:47 UK, Sunday February 01, 2004

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1121690,00.html

[huski]

thaksin had the balls to go into KFC, wow tough guy. wish he had went to the farms all over Thailand and showed his moon face to the farmers as their lives and income were destroyed in front of them.

if this turns into a human to human epidemic, i want the dickweed a few days ago that told me thaksin's popularity won't ever be affected to reply to this post.

[Guest IT Manager]

I thought ''Core'' was fiction...a sci-fi movie, in fact. This may not be.

It is sci fi Mike. It puts a situation together that is as close to home as it's possible to be now.

Monsanto selling screwed product to third world nations, then cashing in when the farmers find the seed doesn't reproduce.

In core defence department generals build end of world machine and test it. It works but they don't say the tested it. A problem is caused and (thank god we have them) Americans build a machine to sort it out, go out and do the job and....

See the movie !

[frodo]

thaksin had the balls to go into KFC, wow tough guy. wish he had went to the farms all over Thailand and showed his moon face to the farmers as their lives and income were destroyed in front of them.

if this turns into a human to human epidemic, i want the dickweed a few days ago that told me thaksin's popularity won't ever be affected to reply to this post.

I agree with that, the man has some balls. Couldn't beleive that he sits there eating KFC, stating there is nothing wrong with Thai chicken, whilst, I read on the same page there are more documented cases in the Kingdom! To top it off he offers not one-million, but three million baht to anyone who dies eating "properly cooked chicken." Mr. Shittywatera what a great liar and master of deception you are. The poor youngsters who were the first to die, only received 120,000baht to the family, not the one-million promised. I too would like to hear from the ass who wrote in the Bkkpost what a great man Shittywatera actually is ( a foreigner here for about 10 years). Why doesn't he take a leap somewhere in Pattaya. Idiot.

[Dove]

Just thinking aloud.

Would migratory birds be the future vehile for Weapons of Mass Destruction? Suppose, if there were a crazy terrorist group that was able to develop a virus strain, to be carried by birds, that would eventually mutate to cause a dealy disease to be spread from human to human, wouldn't that be a very powerful weapon.

Imagine, if someone were to study the migratory habits of certain birds and understand where they fly to for the winter and return in the summer. Take for example if a terrorist group in Central America were to develop a deadly virus and infect a few birds which would then spread it to the rest of the flock to be in time for the migration into the USA.

Birds would be an ideal transport of virus warfare as the air defence security net would ignore the flock as a threat. All it takes is for the birds like pigeons to settle in highly dense areas in the USA to cause an epidemic.

With birds who would bother hijacking aircrafts to crash into buildings?

[Adjan]

Since yesterday february 1st, european TV channels are speacking about the probability of human to human infection (before they was speaking about possibility).

Toxin is now angry with WHO. He told that this probability is too thin to inform the public...

(Sorry again about my poor english)

[Spellbound]

Vietnam ADMITS TOURISM TAKES A DIVE (WILL TASKIN DO THE SAME ????)

2/2/2004 8:28:35 AM GMT

Vietnam says teenage boy dies of bird flu.

HANOI (Reuters) - An 18-year-old youth has died of bird flu, bringing to nine the fatalities in Vietnam from a virus that is sweeping across Asia, a hospital in southern Ho Chi Minh City says.

"The boy was admitted to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City on January 29 and tested positive for the H5N1 virus on January 31," said a doctor at the hospital on Monday. "He died this morning."

Tran Tinh Hien, deputy director of the hospital, said: "We know that he ate chicken that died from the bird flu virus."

The World Health Organisation has yet to confirm the death, but the U.N. body said the virus was gaining ground and some foreign tourists cancelled visits.

The WHO had said on Sunday that two Vietnamese sisters who died from bird flu in late January after caring for their sick brother might have caught it from their sibling.

But it added that, if so, the spread was limited.

The brother died of an unidentified respiratory illness after falling sick on January 3, soon after his wedding party. As his body was cremated, no further tests could be carried out.

WHO spokesman Robert Dietz said on Monday that if this was a human-to-human transmission -- the first of its kind in the current 10-country bird flu outbreak -- it was limited to only those who had close contact with the infected.

"The man became ill possibly with contact from poultry that might have been at the wedding party while preparing the meal for the party," Dietz told Reuters Television in an interview.

But a team from the WHO and Vietnam's Health Ministry who visited the family's home in northern Thai Binh province found no such exposure for the sisters. They also cannot explain why the man's widow recovered but his sisters did not.

NO NEED FOR "RED ALERT"

Dietz said that, while worrying, the new cases did not warrant any general public warning, quarantines or other measures such as those used during an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2002 that struck Vietnam and other countries.

"No great red alert going out, no door opening into the great feared human-to-human transmission," he said, adding that there were no plans to put out travel advisories or warnings.

"This is not that situation. There is not a general public health threat that makes it dangerous for people to be in Vietnam providing they stay away from live poultry, poultry farms and poultry markets," he said.

Nonetheless, skittish tourists have begun cancelling trips to the Southeast Asian country, where the travel industry had only just begun to recover from last year's brush with the SARS virus that killed five people.

Two French tour operators, citing concerns about bird flu, cancelled contracts with ATC Travel in Hanoi that would have brought in around 100 European visitors.

"This is a bad start for a new year," Hoang Anh Tuan, director of ATC Travel, told Reuters on Monday.

That comes on top of up to 1,000 cancellations from normally risk-averse Japanese.

The youth whose death was reported on Monday was from the ethnic minority K'ho group in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong.

If confirmed, the death would be only the second in southern Vietnam, which has seen the bulk of chicken flu infections in poultry. All the other human fatalities have been from the north.

In addition, two other people in Vietnam have also caught the virus, but have recovered or are being treated in hospital.

Experts believe most if not all the cases came from contact with sick poultry or their waste.

On Monday, Thailand announced its third avian flu human death, a 58-year-old woman. All of its cases were from direct contact with chickens.

The flu has spread to 47 of Vietnam's 64 provinces and major cities, resulting in the death or cull of more than seven million poultry.

[frodo]

Asia's Bird Flu Death Toll Rises to 12

1 hour, 56 minutes ago Add Health - AP to My Yahoo!

By EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer

BANGKOK, Thailand - Asia's bird flu death toll rose to 12 with the announcement Monday of two additional deaths, while China said it suspected the virus has reached poultry in one of its most remote corners.

U.N. officials warned the outbreak was far from over.

The latest victims were an 18-year-old man in Vietnam who died Monday and a 58-year-old woman in Thailand whose death was confirmed Monday to be from bird flu following an autopsy.

"Bird flu remains a serious public and animal health threat and continues to spread," said He Changchui of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (news - web sites). "The eruption of new infection cases in Thailand, China and Vietnam shows that the disease is far from being under control."

The U.N. agency announced it was hosting an urgent three-day meeting in Rome beginning Tuesday on the bird flu crisis.

Bird flu has struck poultry in at least 10 Asian countries, but infections in people have been reported only in Thailand and Vietnam.

Doctors in Germany were awaiting test results on a woman who recently returned from Thailand complaining of nausea, dizziness and fever. However, Herbert Schmitz, a virus expert at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, played down chances the woman has bird flu.

No other cases of people catching the virus from other people have been suspected anywhere else.

Klaus Stohr, chief flu expert at the World Health Organization, said the possibility the Vietnamese women could have become infected through human-to-human contact does not raise the level of concern over the outbreak.

Limited human-to-human transmission of the virus is not the real danger. What experts fear is the virus mutating into a form that passes easily between people — a pandemic strain that is a hybrid of the bird virus and a normal human influenza variety.

The genetic makeup of the virus from the two sisters is being analyzed in a Hong Kong lab, but experts don't expect to see anything suspicious.

"The thing is still in the box. If we sit on the lid it will stay there," he said. "Nothing has changed in comparison to last week."

The latest death came Monday at Vietnam's Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, according to hospital deputy director Tran Tinh Hien. The 18-year-old victim was admitted Thursday.

The death announced Monday in Thailand happened earlier, but health officials did not say when. The 58-year-old woman from Suphanburi province was suspected to have bird flu, and that was confirmed with an autopsy, Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphun said.

Thaksin challenges WHO statement

Published on Feb 3, 2004

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinwatra yesterday criticised the World Health Organisation (WHO) for raising the possibility that avian influenza may have been transmitted between humans in Vietnam.

Reacting to the WHO's statement on the deaths of two sisters, Thaksin said "researchers should make their theories public only if there is solid evidence to confirm them.

"The ethics of researchers is that if there is only the slight possibility of something happening, then they will discuss it among themselves in the laboratory. They will not say anything to the public to raise concern," Thaksin said.

"If the possibility is higher than 5 per cent they should inform the public. But if it's lower than 5 per cent they should not say anything," he said.

He pegged the possibility of human-to-human transmission at "0.0001 per cent."

The WHO said the two sisters who died in January in Hanoi could have contracted the H5N1 virus from their brother who succumbed to the bird flu.

Countering the prime minister's odds-making, Dr Somchai Phirapakorn, a WHO representative in Thailand, reiterated that there's a high possibility of human-to-human transmission although it is not 100 per cent.

"We should never be imprudent on the bird-flu outbreak. We may not be able to find more evidence on the matter because the deaths happened about a month ago," the doctor said.

He also said the WHO is now concerned about those involved in culling chickens as well as those who care for infected people. "We are worried that those people do not have proper protection and that could make them vulnerable to the virus," he said.

Another WHO representative, Dr Bjorn Melgaard, warned that a possible mutation of virus in swine could increase the risk of human infection.

There is evidence that pigs are good "mixing " vessels, as they can be susceptible to both avian and human influenza viruses.

"If that happens, there is an increased risk of human transmission," he said.

Dr Melgaard said that it was unlikely that the current virus would genetically mutate its properties in such a way that it could cause a pandemic. He said there was a low probability of transmission between humans.Hans Wagner, senior regional animal production and health officer with the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation, warned that there is a possibility that humans could become carriers of the bird flu. He recommended restricting people travelling in infected areas.The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation will today hold an emergency meeting in Rome with veterinary officials from affected countries and experts to generate more guidelines for handling the crisis.

Woranaree Kosajan, Rungrawee C Pinyorat

THE NATION

It's reassuring that Dr. Shittywatera is also a leading expert and obviouly has a doctorate in Avian Influenza. When they continue to "mess up," more lives maybe lost, the WHO may tell the good doctor to go kick rocks somewhere. Anyone for chicken this Saturday? The good doctor is making it himself.

[Adjan]

Reacting to the WHO's statement on the deaths of two sisters, Thaksin said "researchers should make their theories public only if there is solid evidence to confirm them.

"The ethics of researchers is that if there is only the slight possibility of something happening, then they will discuss it among themselves in the laboratory. They will not say anything to the public to raise concern," Thaksin said.

"If the possibility is higher than 5 per cent they should inform the public. But if it's lower than 5 per cent they should not say anything," he said.

He pegged the possibility of human-to-human transmission at "0.0001 per cent."

I'd like to inform the public that the possibility of that Toxin's brain is probably definitively out of order is much higher than 5%. Poor man...

[george]

No human transmission yet

The World Health Organisation yesterday downplayed the new concern over human-to-human transmission of bird flu after the first possible case was reported in Vietnam on Sunday.

Bjorn Melgaard, WHO representative in Thailand, claimed that with initial information on the avian virus, H5N1, it was ``not a very efficient virus in terms of infecting humans. The WHO does not think the current virus will mutate or change its properties to cause a large virus outbreak''.

Mr Melgaard said the avian virus did not pose a global public health risk but the risk would occur if a new virus was created through a combination of the current bird flu virus and the human influenza virus, making it transmittable to humans.

He was speaking in response to a report that two sisters who died of bird flu in Vietnam were suspected by the WHO to have caught the disease from their brother, who died of respiratory illness shortly before the sisters were admitted to hospital.

Mr Melgaard said in Thailand there was no evidence and no suspicion of human-to-human infection even among the suspect cases.

He Changchui, the Food and Agriculture Organisation's representative, called for affected countries not to drop their guard. ``The eruption of new infection cases in Thailand, China and Vietnam shows that the disease is far from being under control,'' he said.

--Bangkok Post 2004-02-03

[george]

Update:

WHO optimistic bird flu can be contained

The World Health Organisation says Asia still has a chance to beat the spread of bird flu among humans.

There are fears the virus may mutate into a stronger form that people can pass to each other.

The head of the WHO's global influenza program, Klaus Stoehr, says at this stage there is no indication whatsoever of any outbreak in humans.

The bird flu crisis, which has killed or prompted the slaughter of millions of poultry across Asia, has officially caused the death of 12 people, nine in Vietnam and three in Thailand.

Most of the human fatalities are thought to have been caused by contact with an infected bird.

--Radio Australia 2004-02-03

[Rinrada]

Hugh Pennington, professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, told BBC News Online: "The first line of defence is killing all infected chickens and the birds they have come into contact with.

"It's how we dealt with the foot and mouth epidemic."

People who are in close contact with poultry are at the highest risk of contracting the disease.

Birds excrete the virus, which dries and becomes pulverised, and can then be inhaled.

Workers in the Asian poultry industry can cut their risk of developing the virus by keeping hen houses as clean as possible and washing their hands after dealing with birds.

Those who come into contact with wild birds are also being advised to wash their hands because of concern they too could be carrying the virus.

If avian flu did start to spread between humans, scientists would have the option of using antiviral drugs, such as rimantadine.

These drugs are unlikely to have been used in the Asian outbreaks so far however, both because they are expensive

But Professor Pennington said: "These drugs would come into their own if there was an epidemic."

Experts are also working on developing a vaccine

Q: Can I continue to eat chicken?

Yes. Experts say avian flu is not a food-borne virus, so eating chicken is safe.

Professor Hugh Pennington of Aberdeen University told BBC News Online: "The virus is carried in the chicken's gut.

"A person would have to dry out the chicken meat and would have to sniff the carcass to be at any risk. But even then, it would be very hard to become infected."

[francois]

hi'

someone said, Vietnam have less tourist ... Thailand too !

all tour operators said in europe, no cancel yet ..liars !

I want to come back earlier home ... Missing and worrying about my family ...

5 days ago, no seat free at the time I wanted ...

tonight,I tried again, free thursday, friday, saturday, sunday ....

everyday, some seats left ... and they say, nobody cancelled yet ?! ...

if asia is scared, europe too, fear has arrived already, news everyday ...

just to remind everyone .. still in asia only, don't worry ....

but people cancel their holidays .... going somewhere else to find some sun

francois

if the Thai pm is honnest he should say so, tourism is diving deep!

[francois]

do we have any news from China?

seems to be pretty closed for a place where all started ...