Two adults tested for bird flu after North Wales outbreak

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Publisher:  Jon Land
Published: 24/05/2007 - 17:22:24 PM Printable version
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Adults tested after North
Wales bird flu outbreak. Chief
Veterinary Officer for Wales
Dr Christianne Glossop (left)
and Wales' Chief Medical
Officer, Dr Mike Simmons at a
press conference in the
National Assembly building in
Cardiff (Pic: PA)

Two adults are being tested for bird flu after an outbreak of the virus on a north Wales farm, it was confirmed today.

Dr Christianne Glossop, Chief Veterinary Officer for Wales, said it was not the most dangerous H5N1 strain but H7N2 low pathogenic avian influenza.

She said: "We have no reason to believe that the viral infection is spreading rapidly within this small population.

"This isn't another East Anglia situation at the moment."

Thirty chickens were today being slaughtered at the smallholding in Corwen after 15 birds died.

The dead birds were 22-week-old Rhode Island Red chickens which were bought by the smallholding two weeks ago, bringing their total number of chickens to 45.

But one of the new chickens died the day after it was taken to the farm and now all of them are dead. Tests were carried out after the farm's owners contacted their own vet. It was only learned yesterday that tests had detected the virus, and further tests to confirm this were carried out through the night.

A 1km restriction zone has now been set up around the farm, stopping birds and bird products being moved in or out of the area. Test results are now expected on the two adults connected to the smallholding, and everyone entering the site is taking flu drug Tamiflu as a precaution.

Dr Glossop said: "Wales and Great Britain contingency plans have been activated and in line with these the farm has been placed under restrictions.

"We are not yet asking bird keepers within the zone to bring their birds indoors."

She emphasised the need for proper biosecurity measures, adding: "I'd like to think people have learned from foot and mouth."

The source of the outbreak is being investigated and Dr Glossop urged poultry keepers to look out for signs of disease in their birds.

She said: "As the jigsaw puzzle becomes clearer we may put restraints on holdings in other parts of Britain.

"We will be monitoring the situation on an ongoing basis."

She added that all measures in Wales's contingency plan for bird flu were being put in place, and that the Welsh Assembly Government is working with the Scottish Executive and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Dr Mike Simmons, senior medical officer for Wales, said there was a large enough supply of flu drug Tamiflu to provide a five-day treatment course for a quarter of the population of Wales.

Supplies of the drug have been delivered to the local health board for the affected area.

Dr Simmons said there is no ongoing risk to the public, and added: "We do not anticipate this virus transmogrifying into the H5 strain, but it's not impossible."

Dr Glossop said the strain of bird flu was "pretty unusual" and added: "We don't know how it's going to develop."

She added that the infected chickens were egg producers and there were investigations going on to trace what had left the farm and come on to the farm in recent weeks.

A spokeswoman for the Food Standards Agency said anyone eating eggs from the infected poultry was not at risk of contracting the virus.

She said: "Avian flu does not pose a food safety risk with low pathogenic strains.

"The virus does not get into meat and eggs, but agency advice to consumers is that they should follow their usual good hygiene food practices, ensuring poultry products are thoroughly cooked and eggs are cooked until the whites are solid."

Conservative Welsh Assembly member Brynle Williams said: "This latest incident is the first of its kind in Wales, and I am appealing to all residents in Corwen and nearby to behave calmly and to let Government officials carry out their duties now that bird flu has arrived in north Wales."

Investigations are now being carried out to determine where the birds were bought from. Dr Glossop said that the birds' cause of death is yet to be confirmed.

The National Public Health Service for Wales said two people living on the farm had symptoms of flu and conjunctivitis.

Both are receiving treatment and have had blood tests. Neither is in hospital.

A spokeswoman said: "In almost all cases of human H7 infection to date, the virus has only caused a mild disease.

"H7 avian flu remains largely a disease of birds. Almost all human H7 infections documented so far have been associated with close contact with dead or dying poultry.

"In any case, it is very difficult for human beings to catch flu from birds. There has to be very close and continued contact for this to happen. The H7 virus also does not transmit easily from person to person."

Dr Marion Lyons, consultant in communicable disease control for the National Public Health Service for Wales, said: "As a precaution, we are identifying all those who have been in very close contact with the birds in the last seven days so that we can offer them an anti-viral medicine called Tamiflu.

"This can help in reducing symptoms. We are also contacting all those people who have been in close contact with those people living on the smallholding since they fell ill a week ago."

She added that the National Public Health Service for Wales is monitoring the situation closely, and said: "We are following guidelines and plans in place for such cases of avian flu."

http://www.24dash.com/health/21031.htm

AVIAN INFLUENZA A (H7N2) VIRUS, HUMAN - USA (NEW YORK)
**************************************************
A ProMED-mail post
<http://www.promedmail.org>
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
<http://www.isid.org>

Date: Tue 20 Apr 2004
From: ProMED-mail <promed@promedmail.org>
Source: New York Times online, Tue 20 Apr 2004 [edited]
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/20/nyregion/20flu.html?ex=1083459120&ei=1&en=733a9ff6c19edb81>


New York: Human Case of Avian Influenza A (H7N2) Virus Infection Confirmed
--------------------------------------------------
The case of a Westchester County man who survived an extremely rare case of 
avian influenza during the fall of 2003 has local, state and federal health 
officials grappling with a troubling mystery.  5 months after the patient 
checked into Westchester Medical Center complaining of fever and cough, no 
one can say how he [contracted] avian influenza. The man recovered and went 
home after a few weeks, but it was not until a month ago [March 2004] that 
the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suspected an avian 
virus had caused his illness, and only last Friday [16 Apr 2004] that the 
Centers confirmed that diagnosis.

As health officials continue to interview the man, his family, and people 
he has contacted, they have found no evidence that he had contact with 
contaminated birds, the only proven way avian influenza can be contracted, 
forcing them to consider another means of transmission.

Health officials say that any new case of avian influenza must be taken 
seriously, because it can spread rapidly among birds and it can be quite 
serious in humans on the rare occasions when they are infected. In recent 
years, cases of avian influenza in Asia, Europe and North America have 
prompted the slaughter of millions of chickens and ducks. The World 
Health  Organization has sounded an alarm because some strains of the virus 
-- not the one found in Westchester -- have killed people, including at 
least 16 victims in Viet Nam and Thailand early in 2004 [23 according to 
WHO as of April 2004]. Invariably, the human victims have turned out to be 
people who had close contact with birds. In the only previous case in the 
United States, in 2002, the patient was a poultry worker in Virginia.

Human cases that do not fit that pattern are particularly worrisome, 
because scientists theorize that inside a human host, the viruses for avian 
and human influenzas could swap some genetic material, creating an avian 
influenza virus that transmits readily from person to person. They fear 
that  such a development could lead to a influenza pandemic like the one 
that killed tens of millions of people in 1918 and 1919.

Local and federal health officials say they have found no evidence that the 
Westchester County patient had direct contact with birds or had traveled to 
any region affected by avian flu. "We can't figure out how he was exposed 
and why he's an isolated case," said Nancy J. Cox, an influenza expert 
at  C.D.C. "We need to understand how he got infected." Dr. Joshua Lipsman, 
the Westchester County health commissioner, said, "While we can't rule out 
it being person-to-person transmission, the likelihood is still very 
small." He added that the patient "had some potential exposures that we're 
looking into," but declined to elaborate.

Officials said the man was infected with influenza A(H7N2) virus, the same 
virus that hit chicken farms in New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware in 2004. 
The H7-type avian viruses are thought to be less virulent in humans than 
the H5-type strain that appeared in Southeast Asia in recent months. Other 
H7-type strains were responsible for outbreaks in Canada [H7N3] during 
2004, and in the Netherlands in 2003 [H7N7].

The Westchester patient, a Caribbean immigrant, lives in Yonkers with his 
wife and children, officials said. He entered the hospital in November 2003 
suffering from other serious ailments that weakened his immune system and 
that might have masked the symptoms of avian influenza. One official said 
the patient had symptoms of a respiratory illness, including coughing and 
an abnormal chest X-ray. Doctors at first suspected tuberculosis. "We knew 
it was something weird, but we didn't know what it was," said Claire 
Palermo Flower, spokeswoman for the hospital. "They did an elaborate 
culture and asked the lab to do more than the usual tests."

The county's laboratory tentatively identified the virus as a human 
influenza A (H1N1) virus, and sent sputum samples to C.D.C. in Atlanta. The 
specimen was set aside because few H1N1 cases were reported during the 
winter of 2003-2004, and the centers routinely concentrate on testing the 
most prevalent strains. It was not until February 2004 that C.D.C. tested 
the sample, when scientists there found that the virus was not a H1-type 
virus, nor influenza B virus.

Further testing showed that it was an influenza A virus, but not tH1, H3 
nor H5 subtype. Finally, on 17 Mar 2004 scientists using other tests 
identified the virus as H7N2. The next day, Dr. Cox said, C.D.C. notified 
health officials in New York that they had a suspect human case of avian 
influenza. To be certain that the sample had not been contaminated in a 
laboratory, they did further tests. Doctors asked the patient for another 
blood sample, to compare antibody levels in it with another sample kept 
from the initial phase of his illness. Last week, the tests confirmed a 
recent infection with H7N2, and the C.D.C. alerted state and local 
officials in a conference call on Friday.

Westchester officials and the state Department of Health have also tested 
the man's family, co-workers and close contacts -- none of whom were sick 
-- without finding evidence that any had also been infected. C.D.C. 
officials said the federal agency did not believe that the case represented 
an imminent threat to public health. Dr. Cox said C.D.C. reported the case 
on mon 19 Apr 2004 to the World Health Organization, which has repeatedly 
warned about the threat of avian influenza. But a W.H.O. spokesman said 
that as of 5 p.m. in Geneva, where the agency is based, no such report had 
been received.

[Byline: Richard Perez-Pena and Lawrence K. Altman]

--
ProMED-mail
<promed@promedmail.org>

[This may be the 1st recorded human case of H7N2 infection. The nature of 
the exposure to this low pathogenicity strain of avian influenza A virus is 
unknown, but the immune-deficient status of the patient may have been a 
relevant factor in both susceptibility to infection and the seriousness of 
the disease process. - Mod.CP]

[see also:
Avian influenza, human - East Asia  20040124.0283
Avian influenza, human - East Asia (33)  20040320.0782
Avian influenza A (H7), human - Canada (BC) (04)  20040407.0948
Avian influenza A (H7) virus, human - Canada (BC) (03) 20040406.0935
Avian influenza A (H7N3) virus, human - Canada (BC... 20040402.0908
Avian influenza A  H7N3) virus, human - Canada (BC)  20040327.0842
Avian influenza H7N7, human - Netherlands 2003   20040221.0561
Avian influenza H7N7, human - Netherlands 2003 (02)  20040302.0633
Avian influenza, H7, poultry - USA (DE, MD)  20040412.0993
2003
----
Avian influenza, human - Netherlands   20030311.0594
Avian Influenza, human - Netherlands (08)  20030327.0762
Avian Influenza, human - Netherlands (09): fatal case  20030419.0959
Avian Influenza, human - Netherlands (10): fatal case  20030420.0967
Avian influenza, human - Netherlands (11)  20030423.0991
Avian influenza, human - Netherlands (12)  20030425.1011
Avian influenza, human - Netherlands (13)  20030501.1092]
.....................ll/cp/pg/dk


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Influenza news 2005.indd

Experience of this particular bird flu virus in humans is limited, so 
we are actively managing the public health response. The risk to the 
health of the general public is assessed to be low.

By 3:00 pm yesterday, Sun 27 May 2007, 12 avian flu contacts had been 
identified who have or have had symptoms of a flu-like illness or 
conjunctivitis. No one is seriously ill. The National Public Health 
Service for Wales (NPHS) has identified 142 people who may have had 
contact with the avian flu:

* 47 in the household setting
* 14 in school
* 81 in the workplace setting

The list is constantly changing as possible contacts are added to or 
taken off the database. Contacts are added if contact was possible. 
They are taken off if detailed questioning shows that there was no contact.

The National Public Health Service (NPHS) is using the following 
definitions of cases and contacts:

A case is an individual with influenza-like illness (fever above 38 
C, aches and pains, cough/head cold, sore throat or conjunctivitis) 
who has been in contact with affected premises or with known infected 
poultry (handling/within one metre) or close contact with another human case.

A contact is defined as an individual who has been in contact with 
affected premises or with known infected poultry (handling/within one 
meter) or has had close contact with another person with confirmed or 
presumptive avian influenza).

The National Public Health Service for Wales (NPHS) has received 
microbiological test results from 9 people in Wales so far. These are 
from swabs taken from the nose and throat and eyes. They have been 
tested for the influenza A viruses, including the H7 subtype that has 
been isolated from the affected poultry. Two tests have been reported 
as positive for H7 subtype.

Definition of a case of avian flu relies as much on clinical symptoms 
as with a history of contact with infected birds or another human 
case. For this reason, the NPHS is contacting every individual who 
has been in close contact with the people who are cases. People 
identified as contacts are being offered medication to reduce the 
severity of any impact from the infection. The NPHS is continuing to 
investigate and identify potential contacts today.

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail Rapporteur Mary Marshall

[There is no specific H7N2 vaccine for use in humans, and the current 
formulation of seasonal human influenza vaccine against H1N1 and H3N2 
is unlikely to have any protective effect. The neuraminidase 
inhibitor Tamiflu, on the other hand, should be protective if 
administered early. - Mod.CP]

[see also:
Avian influenza H7N2, human - UK (Wales) (03) 20070527.1702
Avian influenza H7N2, human - UK (Wales) (02) 20070526.1682
Avian influenza H7N2, human - UK (Wales) 20070525.1674]
..................cp/msp/dk

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damages incurred as a result of use or reliance upon  posted
or archived material.
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