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That Was The Year That Was Pt 3

# 1426 

 

Our review of 2007 continues with the summer months of June through September, normally a quiet time of the year for bird flu, but as you will see, 2007 had a few surprises.

 

 

 

JUNE

 

 

  • June 1 (Reuters) - An Indonesian girl from Central Java has died of bird flu, a health ministry official said on Friday.The girl, 15, from the Kendal area near the city of Semarang, died on Tuesday, Muhammad Nadirin of the ministry's bird flu centre said by telephone.

 

  • June 1st: Quang Nam in the central region became the 16th Vietnamese province to succumb to bird flu, the media reported Thursday.In Vinh Nam hamlet in Duy Xuyen district, 370 out of a flock of 400 ducklings raised by a household had been infected May 30, the province’s veterinary bureau said. Specimens had tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus, it added.

 

  • June 1st: Vietnam is reporting the second confirmed human case of H5N1 infection in the past couple of weeks, after more than a year without any cases.  Additionally, two other patients are being tested who have presented with bird flu symptoms (one has died), and we await those results.

 

  • June 4 (Reuters) - A Chinese soldier has died from bird flu, taking the death toll in the world's most populous country to 16, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday.The United Nations health agency quoted China's Ministry of Health as saying that the 19-year-old male soldier, who was serving in the southeastern province of Fujian, died on June 3

 

  • June 6th: KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- The virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has been detected outside Kuala Lumpur, one year after the country was declared free of the disease, a local newspaper reported Wednesday.

 

 

  • Jun 6th: - The H5N1 bird flu virus in Indonesia may have undergone a mutation that allows it to jump more easily from poultry to humans, the head of the country's commission on bird flu control said on Wednesday. How much of this was political brinksmanship, and how much was science based, is still in dispute.

 

  • June 7th: UK- Bird flu has been discovered at a farm which purchased birds from a market linked to an earlier outbreak, the Government has revealed. Tests found 22 chickens and three ducks tested positive (H7N2)  for avian flu at the farm in St Helens, Lancashire, said the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

 

  • June 8 (Reuters) - A 10-year-old girl from southern Egypt has been infected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, and is in "very critical" condition, a World Health Organisation official said on Friday. (The report of her death will follow in 24 hours)

 

  • June 11: JAKARTA, Indonesia: Chickens infected by bird flu in Indonesia are now mostly symptom-free, confounding efforts to fight the virus in the world's hardest hit country, an Agriculture Ministry official said Monday. (This is a major, and disturbing change in the viruses behavior)

 

  • June 11th: CAIRO, June 11 (Reuters) - A four-year-old girl has contracted the bird flu virus in southern Egypt, the 36th case among humans in the Arab world's most populous country, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

 

  • June 12 (Xinhua) -- A 28-year-old man died Tuesday after being treated at a hospital in Indonesia's Riau province with bird flu symptoms and the death toll of the disease could hit 80 in the country if his case is confirmed.

 

 

  • 13 Jun : Municipal authorities in Riyadh have decided to shut down all the 385 stores that slaughter live poultry from July 26, a top municipality official said.

 

  • June 20th: Prague- A bird flu virus has emerged in a poultry flock for the first time in the Czech republic, the State Veterinary Administration said. It will be confirmed H5N1 on the 21st.

 

  • June 21st: HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- A 28-year-old woman died of bird flu on Thursday, hospital officials said, becoming the second person to die from the virus in Vietnam in two weeks.

 

  • June 21st: Ghana, located on the western coast of Northern Africa, is surrounded by countries that have reported outbreaks of H5N1 in the past.   Last month, there were two outbreaks reported in that nation, and today we learn of another one, plus rumors of outbreaks (unconfirmed) in a `neighboring country'.

 

  • June 23 (Xinhua) -- A four-year-old girl from Indonesia's Riau province has been tested positive of bird flu but her condition is improving because of quick medical response, doctors said Saturday.

 

  • June 23: CAIRO, Egypt: A 4-year-old boy has tested positive for bird flu, bringing to 37 the number of people in Egypt infected with the deadly virus strain, Egypt's official news agency reported Saturday.

 

  • June 24 :AP - Authorities posted caution signs around two Bavarian lakes on Saturday after seven dead birds tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus, the first cases reported in Germany this year. Nuremberg city authorities warned people to keep their dogs leashed and stay away from waterfowl after five swans, one duck and one goose all tested positive for H5N1.

 

  • June 24 (Xinhua) -- The number of bird flu patients in Indonesia has increased to 101, spokesperson for the Health Ministry Lily S Sulistyowati said in press release here Sunday.  Lily said the latest human case affected by bird flu virus was a three-year-old child from Pekanbaru, Riau province, who has been ill since June 18 with fever without cough and cold.

 

  • June 26th: A man from Bac Lieu province has been hospitalized with symptoms of bird flu after cooking and eating a duck which had died allegedly of bird flu. The 40-year-old man, who is now in the Tropical Disease Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, has been suffering from severe respiratory problems in the last few days.

 

  • June 27 (Reuters) - The Czech Agriculture Ministry reported a second outbreak of bird flu at a farm on Wednesday, about a week after tests confirmed the country's first case of a deadly form of the virus in poultry.

 

  • June 28th: LOME (AFP) - Independent tests carried out in Italy have confirmed the presence for the first time of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in poultry from the west African nation of Togo, officials said Wednesday.

 

 

JULY

 

A slow start to July, but the pace picks up during the second half of the month.  Historically, there has been little to report during the summer months, but this year, we had a steady trickle of stories.  

 

 

  • July 2nd: NEW YORK (Reuters) - Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding Ag said on Monday that U.S. health regulators approved its Tamiflu influenza treatment at two lower doses for children in a form with a longer shelf life that could be an advantage for use in stockpiling against a flu pandemic.

 

  • July 9th:  JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- An Indonesian boy died of bird flu, bringing the death toll to 81 in the only country regularly logging human fatalities from the virus, a health official said Monday. The 6-year-old boy died Sunday at a hospital in the capital of Jakarta, said Rumizar Rusin of the Health Ministry's bird flu information center.

 

  • July 9th : Effective immediately, Dr. Richard Wilkes, State Veterinarian with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, has canceled all public sales, shows, and exhibitions of live poultry throughout Virginia and has prohibited land application of poultry litter, manure or bedding in 17 Virginia counties. The cancellation order is due to the discovery of antibodies for avian influenza during routine pre-slaughter testing on a flock of turkeys in Shenandoah County.

 

  • July 10: Recent North American research has made the startling conclusion that several insects, particularly Musca domestica or the common housefly, are capable of carrying and transmitting the New Castle Disease Virus as well its more deadly, highly pathogenic strain, H5N1, which is transmittable from animals to humans.

 

  • July 16th: TORONTO (CP) - New research suggests successful treatment of the H5N1 avian flu virus requires targeting the virus, not the overwhelming immune response it triggers. The study, done in mice genetically engineered to lack critical immune system chemicals called cytokines, found these mice were as likely to die from H5N1 infection as mice armed with an intact immune system.  (Note: This topic is by no means closed)

 

  • July 17 (RIA Novosti) - Experts have discovered bird flu antibodies in migrant birds in five Siberian regions, a spokesman for the local veterinary regulator said Tuesday. "Out of over 4,000 samples taken in the area this year, samples from 50 wild birds were found to contain genetic material of the A-H5 virus and antibodies in their blood serum," the spokesman said.

 

  • July 22 (Reuters) - A 25-year-old woman has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in Egypt's Nile Delta, bringing the number of cases in the most populous Arab country to 38, state news agency MENA said on Sunday.

 

  • Jul 25 NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India declared a fresh outbreak of avian influenza among poultry, the first this year, but a senior official said on Wednesday authorities were yet to confirm if it was the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain."We have avian influenza," Upma Chawdhry, joint secretary of the Union Animal Husbandry Department, told Reuters.

 

  • July 27th: "Worst Flu In Years" - Both Australia and New Zealand are reporting heavy seasonal flu activity this year, with New Zealand having difficulty fully staffing some hospitals due to health care workers out with the flu.

 

  • July 30th: The 38th person to contract the H5N1 virus in Egypt has been pronounced cured and has been allowed to go home, according to a report in the Arabic Press.    Egypt has had better luck with treatment and patient recovery than any other county, with a 60% cure rate.

 

  • July 31st : TWO wild swans found dead in northeastern France at the weekend were carrying the H5N1 bird flu virus, the local veterinary service said today, the second outbreak of the disease in the area this month.

 

  • July 31st :  HANOI (Reuters) - A Vietnamese woman who was seven months pregnant has died of bird flu, the country's third human death from the virus this year, doctors said on Tuesday. "She died on Saturday," said Doctor Tran Thuy Hanh, chief of the Bach Mai hospital where the 22-year-old woman was taken last week from a farm in the northern province of Ha Tay, the largest poultry supplier to Hanoi.

 

 

AUGUST

 

During August the severity of the flu season in the Southern Hemisphere became readily apparent, and Vietnam continued to see human cases pop up, along with Indonesia.

 

  • August 1st: Myanmar (or Burma, if you are old-school) is reporting the second outbreak in the past couple of weeks, once again in poultry.   Surveillance and reporting in this country are less than optimum, and so the full extent of what is going on there is probably unknown.   India recently pointed the finger at Myanmar as being the source of their recent bird flu outbreak.

 

  • August 2nd: Vietnam - A student is under treatment at a Hanoi hospital for suspected bird flu, a national anti-bird flu committee meeting heard Wednesday.

 

  • August 3rd: BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- As part of the U.S. government's effort to stockpile vaccine in case of a pandemic flu outbreak, the Department of Health and Human Services has placed an order for additional doses of GlaxoSmithKline's avian flu vaccine In a statement, Glaxo said HHS has placed an order for 22.5 million doses of its vaccine to prevent the H5N1 flu strain, commonly referred to as avian flu. The order is in addition to 5 million doses that the government ordered in November 2006

 

  • August 7th: HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Bird flu has killed a teenage boy in Vietnam, the second human death announced in as many weeks as the virus continues to spread among poultry, health officials confirmed Tuesday. (This is the 7th case this year and 4th fatality)

 

 

  • August 10th: Authorities in Bavaria have confirmed that more wild birds have been found dead in Germany due to the H5N1 bird flu virus. According to police in the southern state, movement restrictions have been put in place around the Speichersee lake where two out of three ducks found dead were confirmed to have been carrying the deadly virus.

 

  • August 13, 2007 :HEALTH officials in Bali have confirmed that a woman and her daughter died there from the deadly H5N1 strain of influenza. The deaths of the 29-year-old woman and her five-year-old daughter were the first from bird flu in Bali and took the nation's toll to 83, a health official said.

 

  • August 16th: JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- A 17-year-old Indonesian girl died of bird flu, raising the country's death toll to 83, the Health Ministry said Thursday. The girl from Tangerang, just west of capital Jakarta, died on Tuesday after only one day after being admitted to a hospital, said spokesman Joko Suyono.

 

  • August 18, 2007 : AS the flu epidemic continues to cripple the state's health system, an entire Sydney emergency department has been shut down because the private hospital's operators failed to maintain staff levels.

 

  • August 22nd: JAKARTA(AP): A woman who suspectedly died of bird flu in Bali on Tuesday has tested positive for bird flu, bringing the death toll on the resort island to two and in Indonesia to 84, the Health Ministry said Wednesday. The 28-year-old woman - who worked for a chicken trader - died Tuesday after being hospitalized for four days, said spokesman Joko Suyono.

 

  • August 25 Berlin - Authorities have closed off a poultry farm in southern Germany after an outbreak of bird flu. Local veterinary authorities said late on Friday checks at the farm in the Erlangen-Hoechstadt area in Bavaria had discovered birds infected with the H5N1 virus.

 

  • August 29th: A MATHEMATICAL analysis has confirmed that H5N1 avian influenza spread from person to person in Indonesia in April, US researchers reported today.

 

  • August 30th: UK -  Up to 650,000 people could die in England and Wales in the event of a flu pandemic, an official report warns. The Home Office document outlines plans for dealing with an outbreak, including the possibility of mass burials and storing dead bodies in refrigerated trailers.

 

SEPTEMBER

 

 

September was easily the slowest news month of 2007, although my absence from blogging for 9 days makes it look even slower than it was.

 

 

 

 

  • September 6th: JAKARTA: A 33-year-old male plantation worker from Indonesia's Sumatra island died of bird flu on Thursday, bringing the death toll in the world's worst-affected nation to 85, health officials said. (Earlier published reports that he was recovering were obviously in error)

 

  • September 8th: MUNICH, Germany _ German authorities said Friday that more than 200,000 ducks would be slaughtered at two farms in Bavaria after tests indicated the presence of the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

 

  • 10 Sep Berlin - Ducks infected with the H5N1 bird-flu virus might have been eaten by unsuspecting Germans, but would not have infected anyone once the meat was roasted, a state health official said Monday. He spoke after more than a third of a million ducks had been slaughtered at poultry farms and incinerated to curb an outbreak of the disease 140 kilometres north of Munich, in Germany's Bavaria state.

 

  • Sept 24th (Another forced Hiatus) Avian Flu news has, thankfully, been fairly slow during my recent absence.  Yesterday, however, we learned of the suspected death of a 30-year-old woman from West Bandung of the H5N1 virus, and today we now get this report from Xinhua news.Two Indonesian children were in critical condition at a hospital in Riau Province with doctors strongly suspecting them of having developed bird flu symptoms in the country where 84 people already died of the virus, according to local media on Monday.

 

  • BANGKOK, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Preecha Ruengchan, governor of northern Thailand's province of Phichit, called an urgent meeting with livestock officials on Thursday after birds there were found to have died without cause.

 

  • Sep 27th: LONDON (MarketWatch) -- A bird flu pandemic could lead to global economic losses of up to $4.4 trillion and the death of more than 140 million people, according to a study by the Marsh and the Albright Group released at the 5th International Bird Flu summit on Thursday. The study also found that an epidemic would reach the U.S. within two weeks of the first outbreak and that 25% of the world's population would fall ill, with work absenteeism rising to at least 35%.

 

  • September 27th: Avian influenza has been confirmed at a large chicken farm near Regina, officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Thursday. The H7N3 strain of the virus found at Pedigree Poultry at Regina Beach is fatal to birds, but is not dangerous to humans, the agency said. All 50,000 birds at the farm will be destroyed with carbon dioxide gas over the next few days.

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