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Bird flu found in domestic poultry

Outbreak in east Bohemia poses little risk to people

June 27th, 2007 issue

SRDJAN SUKI/ISIFA
Health officials collect turkeys for culling after the H5NI strain was confirmed at a co-op in east Bohemia.
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H5N1: A timeline

1996, China: H5N1 is isolated from a farmed goose
1997, Hong Kong: The first reported cases (18 total) of human infection with H5N1 leave six people dead
July 2004, U.S.A.: Research shows H5N1 has become "progressively more lethal" for mammals
September 2004, U.S.A.: A report concludes cats can spread H5N1 infection to other cats. Domestic cats had previously been considered resistant to similar viruses
January 2005, U.S.A.: In the first published account of probable human-to-human transmission of the virus, researchers find that a Thai girl probably passed it to relatives
April 2005, China: The first mass die-off of wild birds occurs when more than 6,000 migratory birds die
October 2005, U.S.A., UK: Researchers reconstruct the 1918 flu virus that left tens of millions dead worldwide, concluding that the virus was avian and shares characteristics with H5N1
February 2006, France: H5N1 appears in domestic poultry for the first time in the EU
December 2006, China: To control spread of the disease, live animal markets are permanently closed in Beijing
May 2007: WHO adopts a resolution to create a global stockpile of flu vaccines

Source: World Health Organization

After six days of lockdown, the road to Tisová, east Bohemia, reopened June 25. The move marks the completion of cleanup of a turkey farm that has been at the center of a week-long saga testing the response to avian flu.
By official accounts, it was successful. Though the episode was the first time the deadly H5N1 virus was found here in domestic flocks, health officials say the outbreak poses almost no risk to the public.
Bird flu first surfaced in the Czech Republic in March 2006, via wild swans. Since then, 13 cases have been registered in the wild.
František Bartoš, chairman of the Agricultural and Business Cooperative Zálší, which owned the turkeys, said birds began dying in larger numbers than usual starting June 17. “So not like two or three, but it was in the tens,” he said.
Lab tests confirmed June 20 that bird flu had hit the flock. Two days later, tests revealed that the particular strain to infect the birds was H5N1, the deadliest to humans.
Veterinarians created two zones surrounding the co-op. The first, which extended for 3 kilometers (1.9 miles), was closed off and the second, reaching 10 kilometers from the site, was under supervision.
About 1,800 of the 6,000 turkeys owned by the co-op died of the virus and the rest had to be culled. Another 1,000 birds from the village, Tisová, were killed, too, according to the Agriculture Ministry. Cleanup finished June 22, and the next day the area was fumigated.
The virus likely came from droppings that wild birds had left on hay, which was later used as bedding for the domestic flock, according to Zbyněk Semerád of the State Veterinary Administration.
“You can’t prevent these situations,” Josef Duben, spokesman for the veterinarian administration told iDnes.cz. It’s likely the hay later used for bedding was from uncovered haystacks, as Bartoš insists that his birds could not have made direct contact with wild birds.
Though bird flu outbreaks have devastated the livelihoods of some farmers in other parts of the world, Bartoš calls turkey farming “marginal” to his business, which focuses on cattle farming and milk production. The co-op, with 300 employees and annual sales “in the hundreds of millions,” according to Bartoš, sustained about a 2.5 million to 3 million Kč loss.
Agriculture Ministry officials met Monday to discuss how much compensation the government will give to the co-op.
“It is really hard to tell you now the exact amount of compensation, because we are waiting for the farmers to provide us with all kinds of documents,” said Táňa Králová, a spokeswoman for the ministry.
Intimacy issues
As for the possible health effects, Chief Public Health Officer Michael Vít told Hospodářské noviny there’s little to fear from this outbreak.
None of the birds had been brought to market yet as they were not fully grown, he said in the June 25 article.
Even if they had, it is extremely unlikely that people would catch the virus. To do so, Vít said, one would have to “literally sleep with the birds, breathe in their powdered droppings, and never wash, drink their blood or eat semi-raw meat from infected birds.”
It is this kind of close contact with infected birds that has resulted in hundreds of people, mostly in Asia, contracting the virus. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 161 people worldwide have died from bird flu between 2003 and January 2007.
Fears persist that H5N1 could mutate into a virus capable of spreading rapidly among humans. The risk has prompted years of international collaboration to address the concern, including the June 26–27 gathering of experts in Aviemore, Scotland, to discuss recent cases.
No one in the European Union has died from the disease so far.
“There has been no case of passing the virus from poultry to humans in Europe,” said Tomáš Cikrt, spokesman for the Health Ministry. “[Asia] differs a lot from Europe in terms of sanitary codes and cultural habits. Only those people living in close contact with poultry got bird flu.”
However, the World Health Organization has reported that a less deadly form of the virus infected four people in the United Kingdom.
All employees at Zálší were given the antibiotic Tamiflu as a precaution. Should an outbreak occur, Cikrt said the country has enough of the medication to cover 20 percent of the population, adding, “There isn’t a country in the world that would have enough medication to cover all the population.” The expiration dates of the current stock range from 2008 to 2011, he said.
Recent outbreaks in domestic flocks have occurred in Italy, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Ukraine, Albania, France and the United Kingdom. About 160,000 turkeys were culled as a result of the UK outbreak.
Though Vít has said the risk of infection from eating domestic poultry is virtually nonexistent, the Ukraine, Russia and Poland have all taken steps to ban poultry imports from the Czech Republic.
— Naďa Černá and Hela Balínová contributed to this report.


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