H5N1

Nepal: Over 77,000 chickens slaughtered in H5N1 outbreak

Via The Kathmandu Post: Over 77,000 chickens slaughtered. Excerpt:

Veterinary technicians deployed from the Department of Livestock Services have culled over 67,000 chickens in Hetauda of Makwanpur, Tarakeshwor and Tokha of Kathmandu, and Madi of Kaski districts.  

Officials at the department said that the fowls were culled after the Central Veterinary Laboratory confirmed the presence of the H5N1 virus in the samples collected from those farms. 

Bimal Kumar Nirmal, Director General at the department, said that the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development had taken the decision after receiving the confirmation. Vet technicians completed the culling operations at 3:30 am today in Hetauda, according to him. Over 42,000 chickens were slaughtered. 

Likewise, vet technicians completed operations at 9:30 pm on Sunday in Tarakeshwar and Tokha municipalities of Kathmandu. Over 25,000 chickens of 20 poultry farms were killed there. Nirmal informed that the contagious virus was confirmed in samples of 13 poultry farms, but officials decided to destroy fowls of seven additional farms located in the vicinity.  

The H5N1 influenza virus has also been detected at Yangjakot of Madi Rural Municipality in Kaski district. The authorities concerned on Monday imposed a ban on the consumption and sale of fowls and its products in the area. Livestock Disease Research Laboratory in Pokhara said the avian flu was detected in chickens belonging to a Santu Pariyar in Yangjakot. 

The laboratory test confirmed the virus on March 12, and a meeting of stakeholders was held under the chairmanship of Chief District Officer Chakra Bahadur Budha Budha on Monday. The meeting concluded that affected areas would be kept under surveillance and security measures would be taken to control the disease. As per the decision, a technical team reached the affected area and culled 77 chickens and destroyed 85 eggs and 35 kg of feed belonging to Santu and four other neighbours.  

Livestock Service Training Centre in Kaski collected 17 samples of chickens from Yangjakot. Among them, one was confirmed with the H5N1 virus.  

Meanwhile, the Department of Livestock Services said that surveillance has been increased and surveillance staffers have been asked to bring samples of dead chickens for laboratory check ups to ascertain the cause of the chicken’s death. Poultry farmers from various parts of the country have been contracting vet officials to report the death of their chickens, according to Nirmal.    

He said that his department would recommend the government to provide compensation to the farmers.

Branswell: What happened to bird flu?

Via STAT, Helen Branswell brings back memories: What happened to bird flu? How a threat to human health faded from view. Excerpt from a very good article:

Just over a dozen years ago, a bird flu virus known as H5N1 was charting a destructive course through Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, ravaging poultry in apocryphal numbers and killing 6 in 10 humans known to have contracted it. 

The overall human death toll was low — in the hundreds — but scientists and government officials feared that the virus could ignite a human pandemic reminiscent of the catastrophic 1918 Spanish flu. Emergency plans were drafted, experimental H5N1 vaccines were created and tested, antiviral drugs were stockpiled. 

And then … nothing happened.

The virus continued to kill chickens and to occasionally infect and sometimes kill people. But as the years passed, the number of human H5N1 cases subsided. There has not been a single H5N1 human infection detected since February 2017.  

This is the good news. The bad news is that the situation could change in an instant. Related: How live animal markets create a perfect storm for bird flu 

“We don’t know how the story’s going to end,” warned Nancy Cox, who retired from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late 2014 after leading its influenza operations for more than two decades. 

It’s not just H5N1 that has dissipated. The virus’s nearly-as-scary cousin, H7N9, emerged in China in 2013 and sickened more than 1,500 people in China over five years, killing roughly 40 percent of them. 

But after an extraordinary surge of cases — 766 — in early 2017, there were a mere three infections recorded in 2018. So far in 2019 there have been none.  

Although there are ways to make sense of H7N9’s decline, no one knows precisely why H5N1 has faded from view.  

“There are things that occur with influenza that don’t quite add up completely,” Cox admitted.  

Scientists do know the H5N1 viruses have mutated in ways that may be important to their ability to interact with people. Several years ago, these viruses effectively splintered, with some dumping their N1 neuraminidase — a gene that produces a key protein found on the surface of flu viruses — and replacing it with another. The process is called reassortment, and, in this case, it resulted in the emergence of a lot of new pairings over a fairly short period of time.  

The most common and most dangerous viruses to emerge — for birds at least — have been H5N6 and H5N8 viruses. Both are highly pathogenic, meaning they kill domestic poultry. 

“The H5N1 virus has not gone away. It’s just changed into different versions of itself,” explained influenza expert Malik Peiris, a professor of virology at the University of Hong Kong. “We don’t know how the story’s going to end.”  

Peiris suggested it might be a mistake to see the evolution of the virus as nothing but a positive development.  

“It is good news, the fact that overall the H5N1 problems have reduced,” he said. “But you know, you can look at it the other way around. So now we have two high pathogenic [H5] viruses kicking around.”

India: H5N1 bird flu alert in Bokaro after crows start dropping dead

Via The Telegraph, a report datelined Jharkhand: Bird flu alert in Bokaro after crows start dropping dead. The full report and then a comment:

The authorities in Bokaro are rushing quick response teams to nine blocks in the district in the wake of bird flu confirmation in Gomia. 

The state animal husbandry department had on Saturday said samples of dead crows sent to the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD), Bhopal, had tested positive for the H5N1 virus that is responsible for the highly infectious scourge in avian species. 

Besides Gomia, where crows began dropping dead in the last week of January, Bermo, Chandrapura, Kasmar, Chas, Nawadih, Chandankyari, Jaridih and Petarwar blocks have been put on high alert, said Bokaro animal husbandry officer Arun Kumar Sinha. 

“We have sent special teams to these areas. But, there is no need to panic, as bird flu has not been reported in poultry yet. No poultry death has taken place so far. Besides, we have sent poultry samples to the Bhopal lab as a precautionary measure,” he said, adding that reports were expected in a couple of days.  

The animal husbandry officer nonetheless advised poultry farmers to isolate and cull sick birds, restrict access to healthy ones, clean cages and equipment regularly, disinfect footwear/gloves of workers and stop borrowing supplies from other farms. 

“People who eat chicken and eggs need not worry. Boiling these above 70°C kills the H5N1 virus. Also, to avoid human infection in case of an outbreak, one must avoid domesticating poultry birds,” Sinha said.  

The nine quick response teams, the officer said, would aid in containing the spread of bird flu. “If need be, more than one team can be rushed to a particular block or area to assist in culling. Each team is led by a veterinarian who will supervise culling, disposal of carcasses, vaccination and disinfecting poultry farms,” he said. 

On how the crows contracted the deadly H5N1 virus, Sinha said it was possible that some migratory avian species were the carriers. “This winter, several migratory birds were seen in and around Bokaro, including Gomia. It is possible they are responsible for the spread of avian influenza in crows.”

No one would be more surprised than I if a resident of India were to contract a confirmed case of H5N1 influenza. India has had repeated outbreaks of the virus in poultry and wild birds. Bangladesh has had both poultry and human cases, and so, long ago, did Pakistan.

But despite being bracketed by such outbreaks, India's billion have reported not a single human H5N1 case. And with H5N1 currently lost deep in the viral background noise, I don't expect to hear of such a case anytime soon.

Controversial experiments that could make H5N1 bird flu more risky poised to resume

Via Science, a blast from the past: EXCLUSIVE: Controversial experiments that could make bird flu more risky poised to resume. Excerpt:

Controversial lab studies that modify bird flu viruses in ways that could make them more risky to humans will soon resume after being on hold for more than 4 years. ScienceInsider has learned that last year a U.S. government review panel quietly approved experiments proposed by two labs that were previously considered so dangerous that federal officials had imposed an unusual top-down moratorium on this kind of research.  

One of the projects has already received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and will start in a few weeks; the other is awaiting funding.  

The outcome may not satisfy scientists who believe that certain studies that aim to make pathogens more potent or likely to spread in people are so risky that they should be limited or even banned. 

One of the investigators leading the studies, however, says he’s happy he can resume his experiments. “We are glad the United States government weighed the risks and benefits… and developed new oversight mechanisms. We know that it does carry risks. We also believe it is important work to protect human health,” says Yoshi Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and University of Tokyo. The other group that has gotten a green light is led by Ronald Fouchier at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.  

In 2011, Fouchier and Kawaoka alarmed the world by revealing that they had separately modified the deadly avian H5N1 influenza virus so that it spread between ferrets. Advocates of such gain of function (GOF) studies say they can help public health experts better understand how viruses might spread and plan for pandemics. 

But by enabling the bird virus to more easily spread among mammals, the experiments also raised fears that the pathogen could jump to humans. And critics of the work worried that such a souped-up virus could spark a pandemic if it escaped from a lab or was intentionally released by a bioterrorist. After extensive discussion about whether the two studies should even be be published (they ultimately were), and a voluntary moratorium by the labs, the two labs’ experiments resumed in 2013 under new U.S. oversight rules. 

But concerns reignited after more papers and a series of accidents at federal biocontainment labs. In October 2014 U.S. officials announced an unprecedented “pause’ on funding for 18 GOF studies involving influenza or the MERS or SARS viruses. (About half were later allowed to continue because the work didn’t fit the definition or was deemed essential to public health.)   

There followed two National Academy of Sciences workshops, recommendations from a federal advisory board, and a new U.S. policy for evaluating proposed studies involving “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens” or ePPPs. In December 2017, NIH lifted the funding pause and invited new GOF proposals that would be reviewed by an HHS committee with wide-ranging expertise drawn from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other federal agencies.   

Now, the HHS committee has approved the same work in the Kawaoka and Fouchier labs that set off the furor 8 years ago. Last summer the committee reviewed the projects and made recommendations about risk-benefit analyses, safety measures to avoid exposures, and communications plans, an HHS spokesperson says. (She said the agency cannot make the reviews public because they contain proprietary and grant competition information.)

India: No humans infected with H5N1 bird flu in Bihar so far

Via The Times of India: No humans infected with bird flu in Bihar so far. Excerpt and then a comment:

PATNA: No case of humans getting infected with the bird flu virus has been detected in Bihar so far, a senior state government official said. 

"Among the reported cases of suspected or confirmed bird flu, we have not come across with any such incident (of humans getting infected with the virus) so far," Health department Principal Secretary Sanjay Kumar told reporters here. 

The first incident of suspected avian influenza was reported from six villages of Asarganj block of Munger district in December. 

The state has, so far, found samples positive for bird flu from four places - two places in Munger and one each in Banka and in the zoo in Patna. 

"There are chances that the animal husbandry department employees may get affected (with bird flu) as they come in contact with dead birds, but no such incidents have come to our notice," he said.

India has dealt repeatedly with serious H5N1 outbreaks in poultry, but has never, to my knowledge, reported a human case. I have no idea why this should be the case, when both Pakistan to the west and Bangladesh to the east have seen such cases.

Branswell on the Nagoya Protocol

Via STAT, Helen Branswell writes: Science with borders: A debate over national rights could inhibit research. Excerpt:

There is something that is weighing heavily on the minds of some infectious diseases scientists these days. It’s not the challenging Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, though that is deeply concerning. It’s not a new flu virus or slashed research budgets or laboratory safety violations. 

It’s an international treaty. More specifically, it’s an agreement within a treaty that could, depending on how negotiations play out, make it extraordinarily difficult to conduct disease surveillance or forge research collaborations around the world. 

The agreement — known as the Nagoya Protocol — could drown researchers in oceans of paperwork and hobble the world’s scientists when they must next race to combat a new disease disaster, some fear. 

The protocol is part of the Convention on Biodiversity, an international treaty aimed at protecting each country’s control over its own biological resources. It lays out ways by which biological resources may be shared and the benefits of those resources be distributed.

But since the protocol came into force in October 2014, debate has raged about whether the genetic sequences of pathogens — the string of code that characterizes a flu bug making the rounds or an Ebola virus isolated from a stricken health worker — are subject to the agreement. 

More than 100 countries have ratified the protocol. The United States, which is not a party to the Convention on Biodiversity, has not. 

Some involved in the debate argue genetic sequences aren’t covered by Nagoya, and that the free sharing of digital genetic information is so entrenched in scientific practice — scientific journals require it of their authors — that there’s no going back. Plus, some argue, to subject genetic sequence data to further bureaucracy would be counterproductive to science and dangerous to public health. 

But a large number of developing countries insist that the protocol gives them as much sovereignty over the genetic sequence data of viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other pathogens found within their borders as it does over plants that are crucial to drug production. 

In an age of synthetic biology, when a virus can be made from scratch by following a genetic sequencing recipe plucked from a public database, to have the genetic information is to have the bug itself, these countries argue. 

That’s not science fiction. At the start of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute used the genetic sequence of the new virus to make the seed strain for flu vaccine. Until then, making the seed viruses for influenza vaccine production had always required an actual flu virus.  

The dispute and the uncertainty generated by this debate are already rippling through academia and the pharmaceuticals industry. Some manufacturers, for instance, opted not to use a vaccine virus recommended by the World Health Organization for the 2019 Southern Hemisphere flu vaccine because it came from Switzerland, whose Nagoya-based access procedures were felt to be too onerous. Easier, they decided, to use a similar virus from elsewhere instead. 

“I think it’s really worrying,” Dr. Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, said of the debate and its implications. “This has to get resolved.”

Vietnam: Provinces take action against disease outbreaks among cattle, poultry

Via VietNamNet.bridge: Provinces take action against disease outbreaks among cattle, poultry. Excerpt:

An outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza occurred in late December in Can Duoc District in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta province of Long An, according to Dinh Thi Phuong Khanh, deputy director of the province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. 

On December 21, as many as 400 chickens at a poultry-breeding farm in hamlet 4 in Long Son Commune showed symptoms of the disease, but the farm’s owner did not report the problem to authorities and tried to treat the animals by himself.  

The disease was transmitted through the air and nearly 3,600 of 5,500 ducks at two farms nearby died on January 3. 

After samples from dead ducks were found to be positive for H5N1, Can Duoc District’s People’s Committee announced that H5N1 bird flu had broken out in Long Son Commune.  

The district’s People’s Committee issued a plan on disease prevention to stall the spread of the deadly flu.  

Local authorities were asked to burn dead animals, spray disinfectants, carry out strict surveillance, and set up three quarantine booths to closely monitor the situation.  

The province also provided H5N1 avian flu vaccines to poultry farming households and large livestock farms with 2,000 animals in affected areas and in high-risk neighbouring areas such as Long Cang, Long Hoa, Tan Trach and Phuoc Van communes. 

Agencies were required to reach at least 90 per cent of H5N1 avian flu vaccine coverage in affected areas, and about 80 per cent coverage in threatened areas. 

Unseasonable weather in provinces across the country could contribute to the spread of the disease in coming weeks.

New Year's Eve, 2008

Just out of curiosity, I've checked what I'd been blogging about here on December 31, 2008...ten short years ago.

It was mostly bird flu; the H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic was almost six months in the future, and I hadn't yet realized that bird flu could not be considered apart from an enormous range of global-health issue. (Also in the future: Haiti's cholera, MERS, H7N9, Zika, and urban Ebola.)

So I was reporting on a two-month-old baby in Shenzhen who was recovering from H9N2. The case provoked authorities in Guangdong to tighten inspection of poultry markets.

Indian doctors in Manipur were working "round the clock" to prevent the spread of H5N1 to their city after an outbreak in Assam state.   

In Nigeria, the Bauchi state ministry of health was on the alert for H5N1 as well; it was about that time, I seem to recall, that Nigeria had one human case of H5N1, which had been fatal.

Here in Canada, Ontario was finally making public the rates of hospital-acquired infections from superbugs like C. diff and MRSA.

On New Year's Day, I was reporting a health scare about possible H5N1 in an Indonesian village. And I posted links to the old Flu Wiki Forum (no longer online) and Mike Coston at Avian Flu Diary (still very much online).

Ten years later we're watching a slightly different mix of bacteria and viruses, but the war goes on. It has been my good fortune to follow the war from a safe vantage point, while gaining ever deeper respect for the men and women fighting it from the villages of Asia and Africa and Latin America to the hospitals of Europe and North America. I hope my posts have accurately reported their extraordinary efforts.

H5N1 in Patna: 'Keep residents away from zoo'

Via The Times of India: 'Keep residents away from zoo'.

PATNA: The Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) team from Uttar Pradesh has directed the Patna zoo authorities to keep people away from the premises as the avian flu (H5N1 virus) has killed eight birds there so far since December 16. 

IVRI experts Dr S Nandi and Dr Karikalan M, who reached Patna on Saturday, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Sunday to the zoo officials and the team members of chief wildlife warden regarding H5N1 virus (avian influenza) and precautionary measures to be taken. 

Zoo director Amit Kumar said the IVRI experts instructed the zoo staff to take all precautions before entering the premises. "Staff members should not use the same mask twice. In fact, they are not even bringing their bicycles inside," said Kumar and added that there was no need to panic. 

Six peafowls died last week due to bird flu last week. Another peafowl and a khalij pheasant died on Saturday.

India: No case of H5NI virus in hospitals

Via The Times of India: No case of H5NI virus in hospitals. Excerpt and then a comment:

PATNA: No case of bird flu was reported from city hospitals on Friday. Hospital authorities, however, said they were well prepared to tackle any such problem. The doctors have been put on alert while the health facilities marked isolation wards to separately keep and treat patients showing any symptom of bird flu.  

The state health department issued advisory to all civil surgeons and medical college and hospitals across the state earlier this week to be prepared to deal with suspected cases of bird flu. The presence of H5N1 strain of avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, was detected from viscera of dead birds in six villages under Asarganj block in Munger district on December 21. Six peafowls died at Patna zoo between December 16 and 23. The lab test reports confirmed the presence of H5N1 virus in the dead birds. However, no case of human infection has been reported from any part of the state so far. 

PMCH medical superintendent Dr Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said, “We have arranged a five-bed isolation ward in our respiratory department to treat patients showing flu-like symptoms.” 

He said after conducting initial screening of suspected bird flu cases, we will send their samples to Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Science (RMRIMS) for laboratory tests. “We also have sufficient stock of Tamiflu medicines that will be given free of cost to any patient affected with H5N1 virus,” he said.

India has been dealing with H5N1 in poultry and wild birds for years, but it's never had a single human case. But Pakistan had a limited outbreak in 2007, and Bangladesh had its first human case in 2008. Why H5N1 has never infected humans in India is a mystery.