Bird Flu Re-Emerges in Thai Fowl, Spreads in Vietnam

By Jason Gale and Karima Anjani

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Bird flu resurfaced in Thailand and spread to a seventh Vietnamese province in a fresh wave of poultry outbreaks across Asia.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza killed ducks in a northern Thai province, the first outbreak reported in more than five months in the world's fourth-largest poultry-exporting country. The virus also infected ducks in Vietnam's southern Soc Trang province, after re-emerging in fowl in Japan last week.

The new infections signal a resurgence of outbreaks similar to last year, when the virus spread to more than 30 countries in the first quarter. Human and poultry H5N1 infections have tended to increase during the Northern Hemisphere winter months.

``This is a pattern that we are seeing this year,'' Keiji Fukuda, coordinator of the World Health Organization's global influenza program, told reporters on a conference call from Geneva today. ``We are seeing much more effective responses than we were seeing a few years ago.''

The H5N1 strain is known to have infected 265 people in 10 countries since 2003, killing 159 of them, the WHO said on Jan. 12.

Infections in birds and people are increasing, particularly in Asia, where the virus was first identified a decade ago. Hong Kong, South Korea and Nigeria reported diseased birds in the past month, while Indonesia, China and Egypt found new human cases.

``In many ways we don't understand all of the factors which allow H5N1 to spread,'' Fukuda said.

New Thai Outbreak

Thailand's Agricultural Ministry said 2,100 poultry were culled to contain an outbreak in Phitsanulok province, about 377 kilometers (234 miles) north of Bangkok. Outbreaks there last year killed three people in July and August.

The H5N1 virus killed 66 ducks in the My Tu district of Soc Trang province, Vietnam's animal health department said yesterday. The remaining 134 ducks in the infected flock were culled, the department said in a statement, adding that the poultry hadn't been properly vaccinated against avian flu.

``We may still have H5N1 being spread through small family flocks,'' WHO's Fukuda said. ``That may be one way in which the virus can hang around and persist but in a way which is harder to discover than a few years ago when we would typically see very large die-offs among birds.''

Japanese Investigation

Japan's agriculture minister, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, will return early from a visit to the U.S. to assist officials contain an outbreak on the southern island of Kyushu, where 3,900 chickens died of the disease and more than 8,000 fowl were culled.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will release a preliminary report tomorrow of an investigation into the outbreak, which occurred on a farm in Miyazaki prefecture, Vice Minister Yoshio Kobayashi told reporters in Tokyo today.

Diseased birds risk infecting humans and provide chances for H5N1 to mutate into a pandemic form. Millions may die if the virus becomes more contagious and starts spreading as easily as seasonal flu.

``The more people that the virus infects'' the more likely it is to reach people who are also infected with seasonal flu, said John Weaver, an adviser on avian flu with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. This would create opportunities for ``a third virus, the pandemic strain, appearing,'' Weaver said last week.

Almost all human H5N1 cases have been linked to close contact with sick or dead birds, such as children playing with them or adults butchering them or plucking feathers.

Indonesian Cluster

In Indonesia, a man whose wife and teenage son were infected with H5N1 tested negative for the virus, easing concern that the cases may indicate a change in the virus's ability to sicken people.

Disease trackers were monitoring the 42-year-old closely. Had he tested positive, it might have indicated the virus was capable of infecting those without genetic susceptibility to infection, a theory doctors have used to explain previous clusters among blood relatives.

The concern is that the virus may eventually overcome a ``genetic component'' that has appeared so far to limit its ability to infect people, Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis, said in a Jan. 12 interview. ``If that happens, then to me that is the really first worrisome piece of information that the pandemic may be pending.''

The southeast Asian nation attracted international attention in May when blood relatives from the island of Sumatra contracted the H5N1 virus, six of them fatally. The cases represented the largest reported cluster of infections and the first laboratory- proven instance of human-to-human transmission.

Whether a genetic predisposition to H5N1 infection exists among individuals and family members ``is a question that's been open ever since clusters have first been identified and right now it simply remains an open question,'' WHO's Fukuda said. The latest cluster of cases in Indonesia was probably caused by common exposure to a sick bird, he said.

This article was taken directly from Bloomberg.com

I'm certainly not trying to scare anyone, but I do think it is important to share any facts/news that I come across. When we travelled we did bring adult and pediatric tamiflu. Luckily we did not need to use it, so we left it for the baby center's caregivers and children. If you would like more information, it's always a good idea to check the Center for Disease Control's website.