Dengue: 38 deaths, 2,900 cases
By: PTI October 5, 2006
“New Delhi: As many as 2,900 cases of dengue have been reported in the country, with the maximum 673 from the national capital alone, and 38 people have died due to the disease, Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said today.
Briefing reporters after a meeting of the health ministers of the dengue-affected states, Ramadoss said in all there have 38 deaths, 15 of which have occurred in Delhi.
There have been seven dengue deaths in Rajasthan, four in UP and Kerala, and three each in Gujarat and West Bengal.
The minister said there have been 673 cases of dengue reported in Delhi.
While 409 of the people afflicted by the disease are Delhiites, 264 are from outside Delhi, he said.
Ramadoss said there were 11 confirmed and four suspected dengue deaths in the capital.
However, the Delhi government has said there have been 16 deaths due to dengue in the capital, five of which are yet to be verified.
The minister said there was no need for panic, adding the hospitals were well-equipped to tackle the disease. “
Previous News thread can be found here:
We can clean up the title on the next thread or one of the mods can do it.
Health officials say it’s time to be vaccinated
ATLANTA State health officials say October or November is the best time to get vaccinated against the flu.
Flu season can begin as early as October and continue as late as May.
Doctor J- Patrick O’Neal is medical director for the Georgia Division of Public Health’s Office of Emergency Medical Services. He says people often are more concerned about pandemic influenza and may overlook the importance of getting regular flu shots.
<snip>
Posted by Pixie on previous thread. See previous thread for clickable links.
Flu Awareness Week By: Galen McBride, 10/04/2006
The message of International Pandemic Flu Awareness Week is simple:
Be Informed. Get Prepared. Do It Now.
Launched by www.FluWikie.com, an internet-based non-profit resource made up of scientists, health care professionals, and concerned individuals around the world, Pandemic Flu Awareness Week, Oct. 9–15, 2006, is aimed at educating the public to the immediate need for pandemic planning and mitigation.
This campaign seeks to redirect public focus from “bird flu,” a highly contagious disease of poultry, to recognizing the coming danger to human beings of “pandemic flu.”
An influenza pandemic occurs when a new, highly contagious flu strain emerges for which humans have no natural immunity. A pandemic will occur if the H5N1 avian flu virus, currently circulating in more than 50 countries on three continents, mutates to acquire the ability to transmit efficiently from human to human. Flu viruses mutate millions of times a day and this virus has already achieved limited human-to-human (H2H) transmission as acknowledged by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The final step to a global pandemic that would kill millions of people could occur soon. The WHO has recently stated that, due to problems with geography, lack of effective surveillance measures, and in some cases, lack of government cooperation, once a pandemic begins, it probably will not be stoppable. Air travel would bring it to virtually every country in a matter of days.
International leaders are concerned that even a “mild” pandemic, such as those in 1957 and 1968, would have a devastating impact on our highly globalized and interdependent world. Unfortunately, H5N1 appears to be more closely related genetically and behaviorally to the Spanish Flu of 1918–1920, where upwards of 100 million people died. In today’s terms, with our greater populations concentrated in many more major cities, the death toll could reach several times that.
The World Economic Forum has ranked pandemic flu among the top four global risks to national economies. The World Bank estimated a global financial loss of trillions of dollars.
According to the WHO, “Pandemics are remarkable global events. They spread to all parts of the world very quickly and cause illness in more than 25 per cent of the total population.” So far, H5N1, in its prepandemic form, has killed more than 50 per cent of the people who have become infected, despite intensive medical care.
Dr. Martin Meltzer of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an expert on the societal impact of diseases, warns that “there is no health care system anywhere in the world that can cope with even a mild pandemic like the one in 1968.” The current H5N1 virus disproportionately targets children and young adults, with a fatality rate this year of 70 to 80 per cent of those aged 10 to 29.
No one can predict when the next pandemic will occur or how many lives it will claim, but it has been estimated that even during a mild pandemic, at least 30 per cent of the workforce would not report for work for extended periods due to sickness or the need to care for family members. A more severe pandemic would cause an even greater absentee rate, with even greater problems.
These grim predictions apply to all industries (including health care and emergency services), all types of businesses and all countries, dramatically increasing the risk of food and fuel shortages, disruptions in electricity and natural gas delivery, affecting the availability of safe drinking water, police and fire protection, and other vital services. In addition, schools, banks, stores, restaurants, sporting venues, churches, government offices, and post offices may be closed for extended periods of time.
During Pandemic Flu Awareness Week, people are encouraged to become more educated to the threat of pandemic flu and to work together and individually to build personal, family and community resilience in advance of a potential disaster. Dr. Michael Osterholm, the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Reseach and Policy (CIPRAP) and a top advisor to the President, compared the coming pandemic to “50,000 Katrinas happening at one time,” with no assistance being available from neighboring communities or even the federal government. “The worst thing we can do is not prepare and think that it will not happen…It’s not a question of if, but when….”
The US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, has repeatedly emphasized in meetings thoughout the country that cities and states “will be on their own. Any community that fails to prepare with the expectation that the government with come to the rescue will be tragically wrong … The cavalry is NOT coming.”
To prepare for a pandemic, individuals and families should gather and store food, water, and prescription and over-the-counter medications and other emergency equipment and supplies. The US Department of Health and Human Services website (www.pandemicflu.gov) recommends that a two-week supply of water, nonperishable foods, and medications be stocked for each household member.
However, many scientific and government experts are urging individuals and families to be prepared for six weeks or longer. In past pandemics, three waves, each lasting six to eight weeks, have occurred. Because the time between waves may not be long enough for the supply and distribution systems to recover, pandemic preparations should be made for as long as possible. Experts such as David Nabarro of the WHO and Dr. Osterholm, have both stated publicly that they have personally prepared their families for more than three months.
Over the next few weeks,The Culpeper Citizen, in conjunction with the Culpeper County government, will run a series of pandemic flu related articles to help county residents become more informed and more prepared for the coming pandemic. <snip> http://tinyurl.com/maosb
Recombinomics Commentary October 5, 2006
Head of the West Java Animal Husbandry Office, Rachmat Setiadi, said the warning was made following the discovery of healthy chickens that tested positive with H5N1 virus from a serology test conducted on 20 chickens around the house of two dead flu victims — 23-year-old IJ and his 20-year-old brother — in Kebonwaru area, Batunggal
“The above comments indicate asymptomatic chickens can carry H5N1 bird flu. Although many H5N1 sequences from birds and people in Indonesia have been published, the link between H5N1 in dead poultry, and H5N1 in dead patients has not been established.
All reported sequences from human cases in 2006 on the island of Java have has a novel HA cleavage site. The novel cleavage site has only been detected in one duck on Java in Indramayu, and that sequence was similar to a few human sequences from late 2005 / early 2006 (in upper twig of lower branch of HA tree). The vast majority of human cases are on a separate twig of the lower branch, and these do not match any reported poultry isolates on Java. Matching sequences have been found in two chickens in central Sumatra, isolated in 2005.
The H5N1 asymptomatic chickens on Java are positive for antibodies. It is not clear if H5N1 sequences have been detected in the asymptomatic birds. These infections could represent a separate reservoir. There have also been repots on the recovery of suspect bird flu victims. However, these patients have been H5N1 negative, so it remains unclear if they are infected with H5N1, or if the H5N1 sequence from these recovered is different than the H5N1 fatal cases. Almost all H5N1 human sequences in Indonesia are from fatal cases.
Asymptomatic chickens in Vietnam have also been reported previously.
Clearly more surveillance and sequences from H5N1 infected people, birds, and other mammals are indicate.”
Experts poke holes in flu myths
Influenza is not a nasty form of the common cold nor will flu vaccination cause the infection, said a panel of experts who dispelled flu myths while confirming that two antiviral medications will remain embargoed for yet another season.
<snip>
Flu vaccination, she said, is helpful whether administered in the fall or much deeper into the season, even as late as January or February. “We are always challenged to get people to take the vaccine after Thanksgiving,” Gerberding said.
She aded that U.S. flu vaccine supply is especially robust this year — 100 million doses, the most ever.
Dr. Daniel Jernigan, deputy director of the CDC’s influenza division, said this will be the second flu season running in which two antivirals will remain shelved. Symmetrel and Flumadine were embargoed earlier this year when tests showed them ineffective against A strains of flu. Both drugs belong to a class called amantadanes. Two other antivirals remain: Tamiflu and Relenza.
A-strains became stubbornly resistant, CDC experts said earlier this year, because of rampant antiviral misuse in Asia. The amantadanes are sold over-the-counter throughout Asia in an array of cold and flu preparations. As a result, flu viruses developed genes allowing them to outwit the drugs.
Thursday, October 5 2006
(Software translation)
Bandung: “His article, often emerged the question ‘’‘whether being or not the same the available virus in humankind and the animal.’‘’
“Uptil now the virus that attacked humankind was H5N1.”
Scientists believe that statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs, could play a key role in combating a flu pandemic.
In a letter to The Times, flu researchers say that preliminary evidence shows that statins may have such potential that further studies are essential. The experts say that urgent research is needed into the contribution statins could make as existing drugs and vaccines are unlikely to contain a flu pandemic.
The letter is signed by David Fedson, a retired Professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia; Susan Chu, editor of the influenza website fluwikie.com, and Peter Dunnill, Professor of Biochemical Engineering at University College London, a leading expert on flu vaccines.
They say that although the potential use of statins has been known for approximately three years there appears to be resistance to further investigation.
Statins are known to reduce an extreme immune system response - a cytokine storm, which is often the cause of death in patients who contract virulent forms of flu. Studies looking at people who were already taking statins to lower cholesterol levels, who also contracted pneumonia, indicate that the drugs reduce death rates dramatically.
Statins, if shown to be effective, would greatly enhance the world’s ability to cope with a pandemic. There would be major advantages in treating a pandemic in this way, as statins are cheap and mass-produced.
The links copied, but the bold print didn’t.
Recombinomics Commentary October 5, 2006
Tests on 49 samples taken from birds on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali showed the H5N1 avian influenza virus has undergone no major changes, the ministry said in a statement today. The analysis was undertaken by a World Organization for Animal Health reference laboratory in Geelong, Australia.
Samples of the H5N1 virus taken from birds were collected between September in 2005 and March.
“The above comments provide additional detail on the H5N1 bird samples sent to Australia for sequencing in an attempt to match the human H5N1 sequences from Indonesia. Prior to the sequencing of the above isolates, the bird H5N1 sequences failed to match the human sequences.
However, most of the initial bird sequences were from 2003 through the first half of 2005, while the first human sequence was from July 2005. Therefore, the match failure may have been due to recent H5N1 that were not reflected in the earlier sequences.
91 samples were sent to Australia for sequencing. Since the human isolates had already been sequenced, the question of major changes was not at issue. The human sequences had no evidence of reassortment, but virtually all samples from Java had a novel cleavage site that was associated with a number of additional changes in all 8 gene segments that were in the human isolates, but absent in the poultry isolates.
The HA sequences from over 50 samples from Australia were deposited at Los Alamos over the past few months, and those sequences failed to match the human sequences. Only three of the bird isolates had the novel cleavage site. Two were from chickens in central Sumatra, but all of the human sequences with the novel cleavage site were from a duck in Indramayo on Java. The third bird isolate with the novel cleavage site was from Java, but it only matched a few of the human sequences. The vast majority of the human sequences matched each other, but did not match any bird sequence from Java.
“”“ *The above comments confirm that the recent bird sequences overlap the human sequences in time and location, but still fail to match, indicating the vast majority of human H5N1 sequences are from a source other than most of the H5N1 infected poultry in Indonesia. * “”“
The failure of the above comments to address the match failure is cause for concern.”
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/10050602/H5N1_Indo_Match_Failures.html
BBC News: [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5404184.stm | Treatment ‘to neutralise all flu’ ]]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. preparations against a possible outbreak of the deadly form of the H5N1 avian flu virus are solid, but other countries may not be as ready, a U.S. health safety official warned on Thursday.
“We’re … close to the state-of-the-art in the United States with preparations and strong biosecurity measures,” said Ambassador John Lange, the State Department’s special representative on avian and pandemic influenza.
Official says U.S. bird flu plans near “state of the art”
My PPF just jumped 2 points. How can they remain so clueless? I don’t worry about getting it from birds. How are our preparations for H2H?
From a story in the Chicago Tribune- Baxter International has produced a vaccine using cell technology rather than eggs. This vax has been effective in tests against several varieties of influenza (Vietnam and Indonesian strains, as well as the strain from HongKong/1997). The immune response appears to be between 67 and 94 percent, but they are “still gathering data.” More tests are needed. The UK has contracted to buy more than 2 million doses.
Oremus - at 13:22
It’s the abysmal “state of the art” of pandemic prevention and containment that has me worried.
Oremus at 13:22: Don’t worry, Oremus. What they aren’t saying is that when avian flu hits the U.S., the government will just push the “easy” button (what, you didn’t know the U.S. government had an easy button?) :-)
LOL, its big and red and sits on Bush’s desk….now thats a scary thought!
Annoyed Max: It was there while Clinton was in office, too. Clinton just neglected to mention that he had disconnected the button before he left. That’s why George has callouses on his button-pressing finger (“if I just press a bit harder next time…”)
The American Bankers Association has expanded their business continuity planning to include pandemic.
comment But no plans I have seen discuss informing employees that they should prep their homes and families. How many of their people will have their minds on their work if their homes are cold and the children are hungry. I don’t think they have yet seen the full downside to pandemic.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/05/AR2006020500933.html
Interesting story of a WHO rep. investigating bird flu in Indonesia.
I knew that Post story looked familiar … it is dated Feb. 5th, 2006. I think they must have a little bug in their RSS feed generator.
Tink – at 17:11 I enjoyed that -I guess that is the word. I found this interesting on page 2 “Though Indonesian and foreign media would continue in the coming days to blame chickens for the woman’s death, Samaan did not think so. It could be something far worse.”
and that from someone that was there looking in the house, the ice box and around the yard.
Thu. 05 Oct 2006 Iran Focus
‘’‘Tehran, Iran, Oct. 05 – More than 4,000 birds have mysteriously died near a city in the north-western Iranian province of West Azerbaijan, a state-run daily reported.
The 4,000 deaths took place over the past two weeks close to a dam on the Aras River, near the city of Maku, the daily Aftab-e Yazd wrote in its Thursday edition. ‘’‘
The report ruled out Bird Flu as the possible cause of the deaths.
It said that specimens of the dead birds were sent to laboratories in Britain to investigate the cause.”
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8853
Map from CIA Fact Book:
Disaster drill tests response in avian flu outbreak
Fort Monmouth is an Army base located in Monmouth County NJ. The drill was joint, Army, County and Municipal. As more info becomes available I will post.
Here is another article from the Washington Post. WHO announces that the BF has mutated once again in the largest family cluster in Indonesia. But, we are not to worry because this isn’t “The Mutation” to cause a pandemic because it has only happened within a family group. To me, it’s another indication that this thing is growing teeth.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301573.html
Guys … check out the dates of the articles coming from the Washington Post. There seems to be a little problem with the articles being listed on NewsNow service
Looks like perhaps Tink has his google search set to sort by “relevance” rather than by “date”. Tink, can you double check?
Commentary
New H5N1 Sequences Confirm Recombination in China
Recombinomics Commentary October 5, 2006
New H5N1 bird flu sequences have been deposited at Genbank and Los Alamos (see list here and here). These sequences were deposited by the Beijing Genome Institute and represent complete sequences of all eight gene segments of H5N1 isolates from poultry and wild birds in China from 1997 to 2004. Some of these sequences are updated versions of a series of sequences released earlier this year under the title “A cohort of AIV H5N1 subtypes isolated from wild aquatic birds and domestic poultry revealed rapid transmission, frequent reassortment, and identifiable recombination events.” The sequence contained a number of examples of clear-cut recombination.
Recently additional sequences from the 1970’s were released and these sequences from Hong Kong are well conserved in the above 2004 sequences, which again raise questions about the central dogma of influenza genetics which maintains that season variation is due to random mutations. In addition to the sequences from the 1970’s, the new sequences from 1997 also show a high level of sequence conservation. In the PB2 gene the 2004 tree sparrow sequence, A/tree sparrow/Henan/2/2004(H5N1) between positions 685 and 2146 has only three differences with the 1997 chicken sequence, A/chicken/Hubei/wi/1997(H5N1). This sequence conservation is inconsistent with an error prone polymerase lacking a proof reader function as the source of seasonal variation in human flu, or rapid evolution in pandemic flu.
Instead, the data clearly shows that both season flu and pandemic flu evolve via homologous recombination. The confirmation of the earlier data demonstrates that the clear examples of recombination are not due to lab error, but reflects the primary mechanism of influenza evolution.
It’s also interesting that the Chinese have known about the H5N1 in Hubei since 1997 (thanks, gsgs). It sure makes me wonder exactly why the CDC is still witholding sequences, though.
oremus-at 11:42
re:”posted by Pixie”….
Outstanding job! Very well written, and informative. I’ve been looking for something like this, for an idea swriling around in this head of mine.
cottontop – at 22:25: I believe that this newspaper is one of the first to take advantage of the Fluwikie Pandemic Flu Awareness Week press releases that many members have been sending out to their local papers. There is an active thread where you can access the press releases, as well as other ideas, and distribute them in your local community. The hard part has already been done for us!
Will Bird Flu Go Pandemic? More victims in more Indonesian cities
“In Makassar, six patients (children, aged from 1.5 to 11 years) have had to get medical treatment since Oct. 3 and should undergo lab tests. Local health officials in Makassar want to conduct lab tests on those who live with the sick and their neighbors, but people locked their doors against health care workers there who wanted to take blood samples. After an exchange of words, the officials asked the village chief to intercede, eventually getting samples within a few hours…
The new fact may complicate the situation even more since the last 10 days of Ramadan will start soon (the last day is Oct. 23), when Moslem communities will end fasting and celebrate the great day of Idul Fitri. Traditionally, most Moslems in Indonesia celebrate by having a party with their family and visiting other families, so that the demand for food, especially poultry and chickens, increases significantly…
Another problem is that infected areas have recently been spreading day by day, with the result that the government has not been able to isolate the outbreaks. For example, almost half the regencies in Central Java were infected by the virus, or 17 of the 35 regencies in that province. More than 600,000 chickens have died and tens of thousands slaughtered…”
http://tinyurl.com/l6gkw
The Bird Flu virus was found to Babi Jum’at, on October 06 2006 | 12:59 WIB
The Interactive TIME, Denpasar: Tim the Medical Faculty the Udayana University Animal found proof that the virus avian influenza (AI) spread to the pig in Bali. This bird flu virus was carried out by the research in the scale that wider to see the condition for the spread of this virus. The AI findings to the starting pig from the student’s research that diagnosed several pigs that were sick to May-June 2006. From 20 pigs, two among them positive was infected by the virus H5N1. “The pig livestock was in Gianyar and Tabanan,” said I Gusti Ngurah Mahardika, the faculty’s medical lecturer the university, on Friday. The developing virus to the pig was sick and could not be cured by getting the series of medical treatment. After being operated on had reddish signs in the network of the spleen. By making use of technology imono histokimia was seen that the red sign was the virus that was in the network of the pig. But the virus H5N1 was not found in the network of the animal body. The “possibility of his virus only numpang lewat or was acknowledged as the virus that oportunistik,” said Mahardika. The discovery was not yet published as the scientific study, but has been sent to the Balinese Livestock Breeding Service as the warning to be guarded against. ‘’‘The spread of the virus, according to Mahardika, really dimungkinkan because of the pattern of the poultry farm and the duck free entered the pigsty’‘’. The possibility of the virus tertular through food or the waste of the animal. In Bali was gotten by approximately 900 thousand pigs that the coexistence with other livestock.
October 6, 2006 New York Times http://tinyurl.com/mnjn8
In a Flu-Season Turnabout, Officials See Wealth of Vaccine Oct. 5 — After approving a fifth flu vaccine for sale, public health officials are predicting that for the first time in four years there will be abundant supplies of vaccine this season.
In all, four manufacturers are expected to make as much as 115 million doses this year, a record supply. That is up from just two manufacturers making about 61 million doses two years ago.
<snip> For the last two years, health officials had instructed providers to give shots in the early weeks of the season only to those deemed at highest risk. Not so this year.
<snip> This period of plenty presents its own challenges: manufacturers will now face the risk of being unable to sell all their flu shots. Since each year’s doses are made specifically to fight the flu strains circulating that year, manufacturers must discard any vaccines that remain unsold by season’s end.
<snip> The Bush administration briefly considered guaranteeing the purchase of all flu vaccines, in order to encourage more manufacturers to enter the market. Besides ensuring adequate supplies of seasonal flu vaccines, this strategy would have improved the likelihood of a manufacturing capacity sufficient to produce enough vaccine in the event of a flu pandemic. But the money involved would have been considerable, and the plan was shelved.
<snip> Altogether, public health officials are recommending that 218 million people in the United States receive vaccinations, although far fewer usually do.
I started a news thread for Oct 6. Will paste today’s posts into that thread. Please begin posting in the new thread now.
Closed to maintain Forum speed.