Swans and bird flu across the world – 02/18/2006

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‘The H5 subtype of bird flu was found in a dead wild duck in France, and the government said Friday it was almost certainly the lethal H5N1 strain. If confirmed as H5N1, it would be France’s first case of the disease.

Bosnia reported its first suspected case of avian influenza in two
swans on Friday and further tests will show whether it is the deadly
H5N1 strain. “Initial screening method was positive to avian
influenza but the slower analysis should be completed on Monday and
then we will know whether there is bird flu in Bosnia,” chief
veterinary official Jozo Bagaric said by telephone. Bagaric said
bird flu was suspected in two of four swans that were culled after
inspectors spotted them on a lake in western Bosnia this week. “They
had symptoms that pointed to avian influenza,” he said. The further
tests were being carried out at Sarajevo University’s veterinary
faculty, Bagaric said. “The samples would also be forwarded to the
European Union’s reference laboratory in Weybridge (in Britain) but
we will have to wait 5-6 days to get results from there,” he added.
Bosnia, situated in the Western Balkans, is on one of the paths for
migratory birds from central and northern Europe flying

Austria found two cases of deadly H5N1 bird flu virus near Vienna on
Saturday, raising the total number of cases there to seven and
prompting a nationwide order to confine poultry indoors, the health
ministry said. Health Minister Maria Rauch-Kallat told a news
conference that a dead swan found in the Vienna suburb of Donaustadt
and a dead duck found in nearby Lower Austria province had tested
positive for suspected H5N1 infection. She said a poultry protection
zone already established in southern Austria, where four swans and a
duck tested positive for H5N1 earlier this week, had been extended
throughout the Alpine republic as a result of Saturday’s discoveries.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
– Bird flu has killed its 19th human victim in Indonesia, a 23-
year-old man, according to tests by the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta, an Indonesian health ministry
official said on Saturday. “We have received the test result from
CDC Atlanta. Purnomo (the victim) was positive,” said Hariadi
Wibisono, director-general of control of animal-borne disease at the
health ministry.
–
The Ministry of Health in Iraq has confirmed the country’s second
case of human infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus. The
case, which was fatal, occurred in a 39-year-old man from the
northern province of Sulaimaniyah. He developed symptoms on 18
January and died on 27 January. He was the uncle of the country’s
initial case, a 15-year-old girl who died 17 January, and provided
care for her during her illness. He also had a documented history of
exposure to infected domestic birds. Problems with the shipment of
patient specimens for external diagnostic confirmation have been
solved. Samples from an initial 15 patients under investigation for
possible infection were tested today at a US Naval Medical Research
Unit located in Cairo, Egypt. Apart from the 39-year-old fatal case,
all test results were negative. A second shipment of samples from
additional patients under investigation arrived yesterday in Cairo.
Results are expected within the next few days. Duplicate samples are
being sent to a WHO collaborating laboratory in the United Kingdom
for further testing and analysis.

Three dead swans have been found on Poland’s Baltic Sea coast near
the town of Krynica Morska, a spokeswoman for the town said. The
carcass of the birds have been hand over to veterinary officials,
who will conduct tests to determine if the birds were infected with
the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, spokeswoman Anna Dyksinska said.
Results of the tests were expected tomorrow, she added. The
discovery of the dead birds in Poland comes after the European
Commission said dead swans found on the German Baltic Sea island of
Ruegen were infected with the H5N1 form of bird flu. Ruegen is just
50 kilometers (30 miles) from north-western Poland.”

Three dead wild swans found in southern Hungary have tested positive
for the H5 avian influenza virus, the European Commission said on
Wednesday. The European Union’s executive arm said samples from the
birds were being sent to a specialist laboratory in Weybridge,
Britain, to determine whether they had the H5N1 strain which can
kill humans. “The Hungarian authorities are applying the same
precautionary measures as other member states in which the H5N1
virus has been confirmed or in which it is suspected in wild birds,”
the Commission said in a statement. The H5N1 strain has been
confirmed in wild birds in EU member states Greece, Italy and
Germany, and is suspected in Slovenia and Austria. “The Commission
will adopt a decision at 17:00 (1600 GMT) today on the precautionary
measures to be applied in Hungary, just as it did for the other
affected member states,” the statement
said. Precautionary measures include setting up a 3 km protection
zone around the area where the swans were found, and a surrounding
surveillance zone of 10 km.

The German government said that preliminary tests on two dead swans
showed they were apparently infected by the H5N1 strain of bird
flu. ‘On Thursday we will have confirmation from the (European
Union’s) laboratory but the experts who I’ve spoken to personally
and who did the (preliminary) tests indicated that it’s very
probably this very dangerous virus,’ Consumer Protection Minister
Horst Seehofer told public television channel ARD. He said he had
called an emergency meeting on Wednesday of the country’s epidemics
crisis group, Agence France-Presse reported. A spokeswoman for the
agriculture ministry said four dead swans had been found on the
island of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea and two appeared to have the H5N1
strain of the virus, which has cropped up in several European
countries in recent days.

Two swans found dead in the south of Austria are strongly suspected
to have been infected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus after
having been tested for the strain, Austria’s Health Ministry said on
Tuesday. If confirmed, these would be Austria’s first cases of
H5N1. “There is the strong suspicion that the two swans … are
infected with H5N1. That arose from first laboratory tests,” the
ministry said in a statement, adding that samples had been sent to
the EU’s reference lab in England for confirmation.

The deadly strain of bird flu has killed 135 swans on the Iranian
part of the Caspian Sea coast, the government said Tuesday. The
official Islamic Republic News Agency said laboratory tests
confirmed that the H5N1 strain of bird flu killed the swans at two
locations in the Anzali marshlands. The H5N1 strain has killed at
least 91 people in Asia and Turkey since 2003, according to the
World Health Organization. The virus has been detected in Iran’s
neighbors Turkey and Iraq. Almost all the human deaths have been
linked to contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the H5N1
strain of the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily
among people, possibly starting a human flu pandemic.

Romanian authorities identified an H5 subtype of the bird flu virus
on Sunday in a southeast village near the Black Sea, the state
Rompres news agency reported. The case was detected after dozens of
domestic fowls and chicks died on a farm in the village of Topraisar
in Constanta County. Two children, aged seven and four, were also
reported to be suffering from mild respiratory problems and taken to
hospital. Local authorities have sent samples of the virus to the
national laboratory in Bucharest for verification. Topraisar was
being sealed off for quarantine, with villagers receiving medical
checkups and vaccinations. Rompres also reported that the three dead
hens found last Tuesday in the village of Cetate, Dolj County, close
to the border with Bulgaria, had proven to be killed by the highly
pathogenic H5N1 strain, which can also infect human beings. The
report came one day after the Agriculture Ministry confirmed the H5
bird flu virus had been found in poultry in the Danube Delta village
of Jurilovca. The virus was detected in preliminary tests Thursday,
causing the culling of thousands of birds. Since the first outbreak
of bird flu in October 2005, the epidemic has spread to nearly 30
villages across Romania. No human case has been reported in the
country so far.

Greece said Monday two people had been placed in quarantine pending
the results of tests for possible bird flu, just two days after
confirming the disease in three dead swans. In both cases, initial
tests have been negative, but the results of a second round of tests
are expected in the next one to two days, officials said. “The
procedure now requires that the two be placed under quarantine,”
Panayiotis Efstathiou, head of the government coordinating committee
on bird flu, told Greek radio. The first case involves a young man
who came into contact with a swan nine days ago and showed flu-like
symptoms. The second was a hunter who killed three wild ducks a week
ago. Both are in quarantine in separate hospitals in the northern
Greek city of Thessaloniki, close to where the initial cases of H5N1
bird flu were found last week. Last week, the deadly strain of the
bird flu virus was found in three wild swans, while tests are now
being conducted on a wild goose from the Aegean island of Skyros.
14/02/2006

Athens, Feb 14: Greece yesterday confirmed a second outbreak of the
H5N1 avian flu virus, after tests on a dead goose from the Aegean
Sea Island of Skyros returned positive from an EU laboratory near
London. The announcement comes two days after three dead migratory
swans in northern Greece were also found to be carrying the virus,
leading local authorities to impose zones of protection around the
areas in question.

Several wild swans died of H5N1 in southern Italy, Health Minister
Francesco Storace said on Saturday, confirming the arrival in the
European Union of the strain of the bird flu virus that can be
deadly for humans. “Of the 17 dead swans, the majority (died) of
H5N1, but this does not mean all (of them died of that strain),”
Storace said on the sidelines of a news conference. “It is certain
that the virus has arrived (in Italy),” he said. A ministry
spokesman quoted Storace as saying some of the cases were the highly
pathogenic strain of H5N1. Another EU member state, Greece, also
confirmed on Saturday that three swans had tested positive for
deadly H5N1, which has killed at least 88 people in Asia and the
Middle East since early 2003. Non-EU member Bulgaria had also found
a case, the European Commission said.

Italy is continuing tests on the swans found dead in the southern
island of Sicily and the regions that form the “heel” and “toe” of
the Italian peninsula, Puglia and Calabria. The government will
impose a ban on the transportation in those three regions of animals
susceptible to the virus, Storace said, adding that no bird flu had
been found in farm or domestic birds and there was no need to fear a
risk to human health. A regional health official in Sicily said the
swans were believed to have migrated from Russia. The news came as
no surprise to the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO), which has warned that migratory birds were likely to spread
the virus into western Europe. A spokesman said the FAO was
confident Italy was ready to deal with the outbreak and that the
risk to humans was small.

“In most of western Europe there are very effective veterinary
services and the poultry industry is of an advanced sort, not
the ‘backyard’ sort, so the likelihood of there being a danger to
the human population is very much less than, say, in Africa,” the
spokesman said. “We are confident that the Italian authorities have
all the knowledge and experience and plans in place to take
appropriate action,” he said. At present, humans can only contract
bird flu through close contact with an infected animal, something
that is far less likely with wild birds than farmed flocks. Asian
countries affected by the virus have destroyed millions of birds.
Experts fear that H5N1 will mutate just enough to allow it to pass
easily from person to person. If it does so, it could cause a
pandemic that could kill millions of people.

Nigerian health workers are to test two children who fell sick on
their father’s poultry farm to find out if they have been infected
with bird flu, a state official said today. “We have received a
complaint … from a farmer that the doves, geese and chickens he is
raising are dying rapidly and his two kids are sick. They are
coughing blood,” said Sa’idu Baba Chori, a Kaduna State agriculture
official. “We’re now going there to take samples of the birds for
laboratory analysis. The kids will also be examined to diagnose the
nature of their ailment,” he told reporters outside Sambawa Farm, in
northern Nigeria. The new suspected outbreak which may have affected
the children is nearby, on the outskirts of the city of Kaduna, he
said. Sambawa is one of four Nigerian farms now known to have been
infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which can
be transmitted from birds to humans and has killed 88 people in Asia
and Turkey since 1997. Yesterday, Nigerian officials confirmed that
they had found the first case of the disease in Africa after 45,000
chickens fell sick and died in Sambawa. They are putting measures in
place to contain the outbreak.

Bulgaria has discovered two new cases of H5 bird flu in dead swans
near its Black Sea coast and will send samples to a British
laboratory to tell if it is the strain that can be deadly to humans,
officials said on Thursday. The announcement comes a week after
Bulgaria found its first case of bird flu in a sick swan in the
Danube river. “We have two new samples from swans that have reacted
to H5,” Agriculture Minister Nihat Kabil told journalists.

Kabil said one of the newly discovered swans was found in the Shabla
lake near the northern border with Romania, which along with
Bulgaria’s southern neighbor Turkey, has been battling dozens of
outbreaks of H5N1 since October. The other bird was found near the
Black Sea port town Varna.Health Minister Radoslav Gaidarski said
samples would be sent to an EU-certified laboratory outside of
London on Monday.

Greece said on Thursday it found samples of the H5 bird flu virus in
three swans in northern areas of the country which borders with
Turkey. The Bulgarian Health Minister urge calm, saying authorities
had taken appropriate measures to stop the spread of the
disease. “We shouldn’t panic the public,” Gaidarski said. “Even if
we find new H5 cases, it’s not worrying if domestic birds are not in
contact with wildfowl… We’ve taken additional measures to inform
district officials to restrict domestic birds from going in the
streets and lakes.”

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in two more
Nigerian states, the Agricultural Ministry said Thursday. The strain
has been confirmed at two farms in Kano state and one in adjoining
Plateau state, said Tope Ajakaiye, a ministry spokesman. The highly
pathogenic strain of avian flu, found in Nigerian chickens, is the
first time the strain has been found in Africa, the World
Organization for Animal Health and the World Health Organization
(WHO) reported on Wednesday.

Africa’s first documented case was reported Wednesday in Nigeria’s
Kaduna state, bringing the total to three states. “The federal
government is doing everything to contain the disease within the
three centers that have been located,” said Ajakaiye in a statement.
The office of President Olusegun Obasanjo also confirmed the
discovery of the disease. Alex Thiermann, special adviser to the
director general of the World Organization for Animal Health —
known as OIE, the initials of its French name — said the discovery
of the disease in one part of Africa does not bode well for the rest
of the continent. “We have been saying for a while that were the
disease to get to Africa, it’s a continent where most countries have
very weak veterinary infrastructure,” he told CNN. “And we know from
our experience in Eastern Europe and in Southeast Asia that the
rapidity to which the disease can be fought, and how quickly we can
eliminate it … is very directly related to the quality of the
veterinary infrastructures.”

Sixteen other countries have reported outbreaks of the H5N1 strain
of avian flu in birds. Human cases of the deadly strain have been
found in seven of those countries. About half of those infected —
88 of 165 — have died, according to the WHO. “It is disappointing
that the virus has spread this far,” said WHO spokesman Dick
Thompson. “This does not change our pandemic alert level. The virus
is moving around, and it makes it more difficult to pry it out of
the environment. This does not change the overall risk assessment in
terms of a pandemic.” According to an OIE news release, the first
outbreak occurred in a commercial setting in the village of Jaji in
the northern state of Kaduna.

Nigerian authorities quarantined the infected birds and began
culling them. About 50,000 birds were affected, the organization
said. Nigerian Information Minister Frank Nweke Jr. said three farms
were quarantined, one each in the states of Kaduna, Kano and Jos and
that they could be out of operation for up to a year. He said the
government was paying farmers 250 naira ($1.95) for each bird culled
to compensate for their loss and to encourage other farmers to
report diseased birds. OIE spokeswoman Maria Zampaglione told CNN
that the organization would assemble a team of bird flu experts to
send to Nigeria by the end of the week and that the government was
being helpful in its assistance.

Part of the team’s job, she said, will be to determine how the birds
came to be infected. Bird flu began ravaging poultry stocks across
Asia in 2003, forcing the slaughter of 140 million birds and jumping
to humans, killing dozens. It has since spread to Europe and the
Middle East. Health officials had feared a deadly bird flu virus
could enter impoverished, loosely governed African regions where
many people raise chickens at home for personal consumption. Experts
are also particularly concerned that H5N1 might mutate into a form
spread easily among humans, triggering a pandemic capable of killing
millions.

Iraqi and U.N. health officials said Monday a 15-year-old girl who
died this month was a victim of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird
flu virus, the first confirmed case of the disease in the Middle
East. Tests were under way to determine if the girl’s uncle, who
lived in the same house, also died of the virus. He died 10 days
later after suffering the same symptoms, officials said. Iraqi
health authorities began killing domestic birds in northern Iraq,
which borders Turkey, where at least 21 cases of the deadly virus
have been detected. Turkey and Iraq also lie on a migratory path for
numerous species of birds. “We regretfully announce that the first
case of bird flu has appeared in Iraq,” Iraqi Health Minister Abdel
Mutalib Mohammed told reporters in the Kurdistan city of
Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad. Mohammed made the
announcement after receiving results from the U.S. Navy Medical
Research Unit laboratory in Egypt that conducted tests on the girl,
who died Jan. 17. “The results show the inflection with the deadly
H5N1,” he said. “We appeal to the World Health Organization to help
us.’

In other recent developments:

– A bird flu outbreak that killed four children in Turkey this month
seems to have stabilized after authorities destroyed 1.5 million
fowl to contain the virus, and no human cases have been reported
since Jan. 18. But, a senior EU health official warned Friday that
more Turkish cases of bird flu in humans are likely. “I would not at
all be surprised if there were sporadic cases” of humans being
infected by the H5N1 strain in Turkey, said Angus Nicoll, of the
Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

– Ukraine’s health minister has warned that the country may face a
bird flu pandemic in the spring when wild birds migrate through the
territory of this former Soviet nation, Channel 5 television
reported Sunday. “Ukraine is among the countries where a bird flu
pandemic may occur in the spring when birds migrate,” the TV network
quoted Yuriy Polyachenko as saying in an interview late Saturday.

– Cyprus was tightening controls to prevent bird flu on Sunday after
tests on birds from the northern part of the island revealed they
had died of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus, a senior government
official said Sunday. Ferdi Sabit, Prime minister of the Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus, Soyer said on Sunday, “We have done
everything we had to but I am not sure about the other side. I am
calling them here openly to cooperate.”