(If you want any of the links to open in a new window, hold down the shift key and then click on the link)
Please visit these threads for latest information from these regions or to add news
| No | Region Name | No | Region Name | No | Region Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | USA | 8 | East Africa | 15 | Arab Peninsula |
| 2 | Canada, Greenland and the Arctic Circle | 9 | Southern Africa and Madagascar | 16 | Central Asia |
| 3 | Central America and Caribbean | 10 | Northwest Europe and British Isles | 17 | Southern Asia |
| 4 | South America and Surrounding Islands | 11 | West and Southwest Europe | 18 | Mainland East Asia and Japan |
| 5 | Northern Africa | 12 | Central and Southeast Europe | 19 | Southeast Asia |
| 6 | West Africa | 13 | Eastern Europe and Baltic Region | 20 | Australasia Melanesia and Micronesia |
| 7 | Central Africa | 14 | Middle East and Caucasus Region | 21 | Pacific Islands and Antarctic |
(Please see the thread Volunteers Needed as Lookouts Worldwide if you want to help)
Separate forum threads for India, Indonesia and Nepal
link to Indonesia wiki page
(From WHO as at 13 Nov - latest update) Total human cases worldwide 258, deaths 153 (2006 – 111 with 76 deaths)
China
Indonesia
South Korea
North Korea
Romania
Hungary
Saudi Arabia
Azerbaijan
Iran
USA
General
Link to news thread for 15 November (link News Reports for November 15 )
(Usual disclaimer about may not have captured everything. Feel free to add your own where omissions have occurred.)
Please note that I copy the links directly from the thread so if they don’t work you may need to re-visit the Thread.
Thanks to all of the newshounds!
Influenza may have made first appearances
By Tammy Fonce-Olivas / El Paso Times Article Launched:11/15/2006 04:43:51 PM MST
Three suspected cases of influenza — the virus that causes the flu — have been reported in El Paso, according to the El Paso City-County Health and Environmental District. The best way to prevent the flu is by getting a flu vaccination. The best time to be vaccinated is before there are many cases of influenza reported in the community, said Sue Betty, health education and promotions program manager of the health district. She said flu cases tend to spike in December and January.
“We have only had the three suspected cases this flu season,” Betty said. “We don’t have any of those confirmed. Specimens have been sent to Austin we are just waiting on confirmation.”
The health district still has plenty of flu shots available for adults at a cost of $20.
Every year 5 to 20 percent of the nation s population gets the flu, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications and about 36,000 die from the flu.
Flu symptoms include fever, headache, extreme
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tiredness, dry cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting and even diarrhea. Children, the elderly and people with chronic medical conditions are at high risk of complications from the flu, health officials said. Juárez resident Alejandra Chacon brought her 1-year-old son Nicolas to an El Paso clinic on Wednesday to get him vaccinated against the flu. Chacon received her flu vaccine in Juárez a few weeks ago.
She said she got her first flu shot last year and she was amazed at how well it worked.
“I think it’s worth it. Before I would get sick all the time,” Chacon said.
Health officials say frequent hand washing can help fend off illnesses, but when it comes to preventing the flu getting a flu vaccination works best.
Flu vaccine helps cut heart attacks, deaths: study from Yahoo News
Getting a flu shot can reduce the incidence of death, heart attack or unplanned procedures to open clogged heart arteries in patients with coronary artery disease, Polish researchers said on Wednesday…
Comment: Gee, they really are pushing those flu shots this year.
Bush to tour bird flu, AIDS lab in Vietnam: report from Thanh Nien News (Vietnam)
Vietnam, hailed for beating back bird flu and rallying against AIDS, is getting a chance to impress US President George W. Bush by showing just how much it has done, AP reported Thursday…[more]
OSHA updates guidance on avian flu from CIDRAP
…In a press release yesterday, OSHA Administrator Ed Foulke encouraged employees and employers who are most likely to be exposed to avian flu to take appropriate precautions…The longest set of recommendations is the one for poultry workers…In the food-handler recommendations, the OSHA guidance says that the two groups most at risk are restaurant cooks and those grocery store employees who handle raw chicken…
Structural changes reveal bird flu pandemic potential
As the H5N1 strain of bird flu has spread from Asia, across parts of Europe and into Africa, scientists at the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research have been collaborating with researchers in Japan to figure out the structural changes in the virus that have allowed some strains to spread from poultry to people.
Usually if a flu virus has an H5 component it only infects birds; it can infect humans but it is difficult for it to pass from person to person. This means a change in the H5 molecule on the surface of a bird flu virus is needed for it to be able to multiply effectively in a human nose and acquire the potential to spread and cause a pandemic.
In a paper published today in Nature, the Japanese and MRC collaborators reveal changes in H5 that allow strains of the virus to recognise human as well as bird cells. The most effective mutations were at amino acid positions 182 and 192.The research teams looked at strains of H5N1 that had killed people in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia and identified these amino acid changes as possible useful markers in assessing changes in the pandemic potential of circulating H5N1 viruses.
<snip>
Calling all brains- can someone interpret the above report for me?
Grace RN — Here’s a link to a discussion on PFI (Monotreme’s new web site) that I think is about this issue:
maybe reported earlier. this was in norwegian news today.
“Economic Research Report No. (ERR-29) 68 pp, November 2006. Eighty-nine percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2005, meaning that they had access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households were food insecure at least some time during that year. The prevalence of food insecurity declined from 11.9 percent of households in 2004 to 11.0 percent in 2005, while the prevalence of very low food security remained unchanged at 3.9 percent. This report, based on data from the December 2005 food security survey, provides the most recent statistics on the food security of U.S. households, as well as on how much they spent for food and the extent to which food-insecure households participated in Federal and community food assistance programs.”
Grace RN – at 09:08
I wrote it up in yesterday’s news thread, and also on this H5N1 Receptor Binding 2 thread.
700-Plus Sick on Atlantic Cruise http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Nov16/0,4670,SickCruise,00.html
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — More than 700 passengers and crew members aboard a trans-Atlantic cruise have fallen ill with flu-like symptoms, cruise line officials said.
The outbreak, believed to be norovirus, struck people aboard the Carnival Cruise Lines’Liberty, one of the world’s largest cruise ships, according to a statement issued Wednesday by the Miami-based company.
The ship left Rome on Nov. 3 with about 2,800 paying passengers and was due to arrive in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday.
“Within 24 hours of sailing, they had a lot of people sick. It has tapered off considerably over the past couple days,”said David Forney, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
He said three environmental health specialists were expected to board the ship in St. Maarten on Thursday to oversee cleaning and to determine the cause of the outbreak.
Noroviruses affect about 23 million Americans annually, according to the CDC. More than a dozen incidents of the illness have been reported on cruise ships this year.
Bank creating flu firewall for workers
A Bank of Hawaii executive says plans are being prepared in case of a pandemic
The Bank of Hawaii is examining ways to keep its work force healthy in a flu pandemic, including methods to prevent the spread of viruses to care of sick dependents of workers.
“The bottom line, this environment is going to be about managing people, sick or healthy,” Senior Vice President Raymond Trombley told about 150 participants at a Hawaii Pandemic Flu Preparedness Working Meeting on Tuesday at the Pacific Beach Hotel.
Absentee policies, sick leave and dependent care are among issues involved in managing employees, he said, explaining policies have been established at the bank’s corporate level to assist employees.
“It’s more valuable to keep employees healthy than to come to work and infect everyone,” Trombley said. Families also must be protected so employees do not have to stay home and care for them, he said.
<snip>
http://starbulletin.com/2006/11/16/news/story08.html
Comment I wish my employer was this progressive - we have heard nada.
anon_22 – at 10:52
Sorry for the repost!
Pharmaceutical factory managers stand trial for selling fake bird flu vaccines
HOHHOT, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) — Seven managers and workers from a bio-pharmaceuticals factory in north China and its parent company stood trial in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Thursday, accused of producing and selling fake bird flu vaccines.
<snip>
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-11/16/content_5340013.htm
Nimbus – at 11:20
No problem. It’s an important study and deserve attention. But we ended up with posts in at least 3 threads so I’m going to have to consolidate them so people won’t go nuts trying to find the posts.
:-)
Shenzhen Tightens Surveillance over Bird Flu
China.org.cn- “Authorities in Shenzhen will strengthen vigilance and take measures to prevent the spread of bird flu as winter approaches, the Daily Sunshine reported yesterday.
All live poultry will be slaughtered at designated places in farm produce markets, the report said. Residents are not allowed to take live poultry back home and all live poultry will be vaccinated.
Winter is the high season for bird flu. Since last winter, no bird flu epidemic has been recorded in the city, the Daily Sunshine report said. Only one person has been diagnosed with bird flu this year but the cause of the infection is still unknown…”
…”At present, there are more than 4,700 poultry farms in Shenzhen, raising a total of 4.24 million birds.
Lai also called for early reporting of abnormal bird deaths to allow speedy laboratory tests and disposal.
A four-tier epidemic detection network has been set up in the city, involving the municipal government, district governments, subdistrict offices and neighborhood committees, Lai said.”
http://tinyurl.com/ybtxq5
I just noticed that the National Biological Information Infrastructure, who I understand to be in charge of the National HPAI Early Detection Data System (HEDDS),has a link to Fluwikie: http://tinyurl.com/yemu6v
About Fluwiki, it says: “A collection of diverse resources on avian influenza with the focus on providing public health professionals comprehensive and reliable information. Broad topics covered by the site’s discussion forum and web resources include basic facts about the disease; pandemic preparedness; national and international influenza surveillance and contingency plans; legal, ethical, economic and political issues; timeless; editorial opinions; and links to maps.”
“World Health Organization officials said that avian influenza remains the No. 1 danger for global public health.”
COMMENT: This is the first time I’ve seen AI listed as #1.
Australia funds APEC to combat infectious diseases
www.chinaview.cn 2006–11–16 17:05:18
HANOI, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) — Australia has inked a memorandum of understanding on offering 4 million Australian dollars (about 3.1 million U.S. dollars) to help developing member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) cope with emerging and infectious diseases, including bird flu.
The money to the APEC Support Fund, formed in 2004 to support projects for developing economies in the region, will be used for capacity building projects, which help strengthen coordination and response mechanisms, build effective regional communication systems, and develop business continuity and recover plans, according to a news release issued by the APEC Secretariat on Thursday in Hanoi.
more at http://tinyurl.com/ymu5we
Didn’t see this posted - hope it’s not a duplicate:
Tennessee county closes schools due to flu outbreak
A county school system closed its doors after a flu outbreak sent hundreds of children and teachers home sick.
The Wayne County, TN School District closed schools yesterday and will remain closed until after their Thanksgiving break.
More than 300 students were absent earlier this week.
Schools Superintendent Jerry Pigg said that after the absences reached 20 percent, they had to take action.
Local physician Joe Hall, who advised the school system to close, said it’s the worst flu outbreak he’s ever seen.
<snip>
Doesn’t this seem a bit high for seasonal flu?
“A SIXTH person has died from a powerful strain of influenza that has struck a Canberra nursing home.
Australian Capital Territory Health Minister Katy Gallagher confirmed today that a 90-year-old male resident of the home died last night.
Patients and staff at the Jindalee Nursing Home were today being offered anti-viral therapies, including the drug Tamiflu.
Ms Gallagher said that so far there had been 56 notified cases of the respiratory illness at Jindalee, including seven staff.
Ms Gallagher said she was confident that the Health Protection Service was doing all that is could to manage the situation.”
link: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20769942-1702,00.html
Winter may bring more bird flu for Egypt
CAIRO - With the onset of winter, there may be an increase in cases of the potentially lethal avian flu virus H5N1 among fowl and humans in Egypt, according to health ministry officials.
“In Egypt, as in the rest of the world, although we have all the necessary precautions well in place, there might be a new surge,” Sayyid al-Abbasi Egyptian health ministry official, said.
He added that the danger was renewed with each season of migration for birds, and as Egypt is on a major migratory route, it is particularly affected.
On 11 November, the health ministry said a new bird flu location was discovered in Luxor, 720 km south of the capital, Cairo. According to the health ministry, the area of Najaa Al-Abyada has now been quarantined, after domestic birds there were tested and found to be carrying the virus. Birds in the vicinity were being culled, Egypt’s official news agency MENA reported.
There has been no new human infections, said al-Abbasi. To date, the majority of cases among humans have been linked to domestic breeding, which remains very common. Bird flu can not be caught from cooked chicken.
While a ban on the practice in urban areas was imposed soon after the virus was first detected, domestic breeding in the rural areas has remained rife as the government did not feel it would be productive to impose a similar ban there.
“A ban would lead many to conceal their birds, heightening the danger rather than quelling it,” Abdel Rahman Shahine, health ministry spokesperson, said. Instead, the authorities tried to focus on raising awareness across the country as well as training health and social workers on how to deal with bird flu.
more at http://tinyurl.com/yb8dx7
Grace RN – at 14:04
A SIXTH person has died from a powerful strain of influenza that has struck a Canberra nursing home.
Patients and staff at the Jindalee Nursing Home were today being offered anti-viral therapies, including the drug Tamiflu.
Does this look like a standard containment procedure? This flu seasons, some countries may be using Tamiflu as standard response to flu outbreaks.
Canberra is capital city of Australia. Latest casualty is 90 years old. It may still be seasonal flu, and ‘powerful strain’ may simply mean so many dead, not the virology of it.
You may wish to cross post this in the Australian thread. Hopefully, some one can keep an eye and find out more.
ANON-YYZ – at 14:35
Does this look like a standard containment procedure?
No, this looks like CYA activity. They had to wait for the sixth death in one nursing home to give everyone antivirals???
I have never tried to post a link and I have read everyone’s info. on how to do this and still haven’t figured it out. Sooo, I don’t want to mess up the side scroll so I’ll put a space in after planet diary: link to planet diary (edit - link fixed, anon_22) Planet diary is a site for school kids, but the bird flu info. was extremely interesting. It’s an easy read, academic level, but I found it surprising to find it on a kid site.
Always here—should change my name to “spongemom” or something!
Humans at greater risk as bird flu virus mutates
This article isn’t full of scientic words, (that just send my brain in a tail spin.) Easy to understand.
ScienceNOW Daily News 16 November 2006
“The H5N1 virus, better known as bird flu, may have a way of becoming more dangerous to people. Researchers have identified two mutations in a surface protein of the virus that enable it to bind more easily to human cells. Watching for these mutations in viruses isolated from people could provide early warning of the emergence of a virus with pandemic potential.
Avian and human viruses differ in the types of receptor proteins they recognize. This has made human H5N1 infections thankfully rare—so far, there have been only 258 cases in 10 countries (ScienceNOW, 9 February). Key to this discrimination is a protein known as hemagglutinin—the H in H5N1--which is tailor-made to bind to receptors on bird cells. It is thought that an avian influenza virus will only be able to infect people efficiently if the hemagglutinin protein mutates in a way that facilitates its binding to human cell receptors.
To search for such mutations, an international team led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Tokyo and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, screened viral samples collected from both birds and humans. This enabled the researchers to zero in on two single amino acid changes on the hemagglutinin molecule, each of which enables the virus to bind to human receptors. A structural analysis of these proteins found that the two amino acids are located in positions on the molecule where they could be involved in binding to host cell receptors. Both mutations were isolated from humans infected with the virus and were not present in any of more than 600 avian isolates checked, the group reports today in Nature.
Previous work indicates that the human cell receptors the mutated H5N1 could target are present in the upper respiratory tract. This sets the stage for the virus to be spread among humans through coughing and sneezing, says Kawaoka.
“It’s an important finding because it shows the possible molecular and structural basis for differences in viral attachment patterns,” says Thijs Kuiken, a pathologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who has been studying how the H5N1 virus crosses the species barrier. But he is cautious about the implications for a pandemic. “The fact that the virus attaches to a particular receptor on a cell does not immediately mean that it can replicate in that cell,” he says.
Kawaoka agrees that additional mutations are probably needed for the virus to acquire pandemic potential. “The problem is we don’t know how many steps away a pandemic strain is,” he says.”
Keep in mind that the researchers did not have access to all the information in the possession of China or the WHO.
GraceRN-
On the Nature paper, they’ve missed some very important matches that Niman was preparing to present early this week. As he’s said it well in one of his 3 commentaries, I’ll quote.
Niman’s Commentaries 2006-11-15 and 2006-11-16
NS1 comment:
If we adjust the numbering to match our current H3 system, the Nature paper is discussing aa186 and aa196. Niman has shown that the 186 position especially is seen to be very active in human receptor binding and/or acceleration. The current change to Lysine at 186 is commonly found in the seasonal and highly tranmissible human Influenza B.
NS1 comment:
Another change found recently in a human index strain in Iraq matches to the Hong Kong pandemic, another human and highly transmissible strain. Dog and Horse sequences also carry this polymorphism.
Current H5N1 HA 186 polymorphism matches
The landing zones for additional polymorphisms are being prepared.
ProMed: http://tinyurl.com/y9rde8
Moderators comments on the Canberra nursing home in Australia:
[The serious illness affecting patients and staff at a nursing home in Canberra is being treated now as an outbreak of viral infection, but the identity of the agent responsible has not been disclosed. ‘’‘The patients and staff are receiving unspecified antiviral treatment, which presumably implies restricted use of antibiotics and reliance on antiviral compounds’‘’. Likely candidates for etiologic agent are influenza virus (susceptible to oseltamivir or amantidine/rimantidine) or respiratory syncytial virus (susceptible to ribavirin or palivizumab), both highly infectious agents frequently associated with outbreaks of viral diseases among the elderly in care homes. - Mod.CP]
Notice this is a different area than Forum AnnieB – at 14:08 which was 720 km south of the capital, Cairo.
New bird flu-infected area reported in northern Egypt
“Egypt reported on Thursday a new bird flu-striken area in the north of the country where domestic birds were tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, the official MENA news agency reported.
The area is located in Manshyat Sultan district in al-Menofiya governorate, 65 km north of Cairo, the report said”
I am having a lot of problems posting today…
I am having a lot of problems posting today…
You’re not alone.
Discovery boosts antiviral hopes
Caroline Kim
Friday, November 17, 2006
Researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have discovered two new plant-derived compounds that could lead to the production of antiviral drugs in place of Tamiflu, which the World Health Organization has advised all governments to stock up on as part of preparations for a possible avian flu pandemic.
November 17, 2006
111Bird flu suspected in child’s death in Medan
The Jakarta Post, Medan
“A 6-year-old child, suspected of being infected with the deadly avian flu virus, died at Adam Malik Hospital in Medan, North Sumatra, a hospital director said on Thursday. M. Nur Rasyid Lubis, deputy director of the hospital, said the child had been treated at the hospital for two days.
The child died at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with a temperature of 39 degrees, after experiencing breathing difficulties, coughing and loss of appetite, he added.
The victim was previously admitted to a private hospital near his home. However, because his condition did not improve, he was transferred to Adam Malik Hospital, Rasyid said. A member of his family said the child experienced a high fever for two weeks, following the death of a number of chickens around his house.
Rasyid said more tests were needed to officially determine whether the boy’s death was caused by avian flu.
The head of the North Sumatra Health Office, Fatni Sulani, said his office had sent a blood sample from the victim to a laboratory in Jakarta to help determine the cause of death.
“We need to wait three days before we can see the test results,” Fatni said, adding the death could have been caused by other illnesses.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said during a visit to Medan on Thursday, she had not received any information on the death of the suspected bird flu patient.
The minister said the number of deaths in the country due to avian flu had reached 55 out of a total of 74 bird flu cases.
Siti Fadilah said the spread of bird flu in Indonesia was unique, as the causes of the spread differed from one place to the other.
“After appearing in Karo (a regency in North Sumatra), where the virus was spread by wild birds, it reappeared in Tangerang, Java, where it was spread by contact between wild birds and domestic poultry,” she said.
“This means as long as we cannot control the migration of birds, it will be very difficult to stop the spread of the virus,” Siti Fadilah said.
The minister reiterated that if in a certain region local poultry was found to have the virus, the local administration had to make a quick decision to cull the infected chickens. A fast decision was needed because the infected chickens could transfer the virus to humans, she said.”
The Daily Star Egypt
First Published: November 15, 2006
Talib Ali, regional animal health and production officer for the Food and Agriculture Organization, a United Nations organization, says the actual number of bird flu cases in poultry may be higher.