UN probes possible human-to-human bird flu
The UN health agency is investigating possible human-to-human transmission of bird flu among members of an Indonesian family, but said today there is no evidence that the virus has mutated or spread beyond the family.
“We’re not surprised that there is possible human-to-human transmission,” said Steven Bjorge, a World Health Organisation epidemiologist based in Jakarta, Indonesia. “The thing we’re looking for is whether it’s sustained beyond the immediate cluster.”
Six of the seven people in the family in northern Sumatra who caught the disease have died, the most recent on Monday. It is one of the largest human clusters ever reported.
Bjorge, the WHO team leader at the village in Kubu Sembelang, said none of the poultry in the area had tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has led a team of international experts to explore whether the virus spread among the family members.
Bjorge said the virus is genetically the same as the one found circulating in the area earlier.
“That, for me, is the most significant piece of evidence,” he said. “Despite some weeks now in following up, we cannot find any evidence of any other cases beyond this cluster. If either of those two things changed, then I would be talking very differently.”
Bjorge said some samples have been taken from villagers, but cooperation has been limited. If anyone outside the family is found to have even mild flu symptoms, they will be quarantined and given the anti-bird flu drug Tamiflu, he said.
Earlier in a statement on its website, WHO in Geneva said it was still investigating the cluster, and that experts were looking closely at the possibility of limited human-to-human transmission.
Scientists from WHO and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating.
Health experts are concerned that if the virus mutates into a form that is easily transmissible between people, it could lead to a pandemic. So far, most human cases have been traced to contact with infected poultry.
Meanwhile, Romanian authorities have quarantined dozens of communities and culled domestic fowl to contain a new outbreak of bird, the Agriculture Ministry said yesterday.
Romania detected its first outbreak of the virus since October in dozens of small villages, and has since culled more than a million domestic birds. However, the new outbreak, which began last week in an industrial chicken farm in Codlea, sparked widespread criticism that veterinary rules were not properly enforced.
The virus has been confirmed in 44 locations, most near Codlea, the ministry said. An H5 subtype of the virus was also detected in chickens being raised in households at the edge of Bucharest, the ministry said.
On Tuesday, Romania’s main intelligence agency published a report which said the farm outbreak in Codlea could have stemmed from tens of thousands of imported live chickens and turkeys from Hungary and Slovakia.
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