Martin W

Reuters has item on research, showing: Chicken vaccination can halt bird flu spread -study – protection best from two weeks after vaccine giving

ProMed just cited news item, re poultry vaccine use in China

ProMed, 26 Nov 05

News item included:

– suggesting there are significant problems with fakes. There’s list of main manufacturers, including one producing live vaccine – which apparently could lead to problems, as potential for the virus to replicate, become virulent.

ProMed, 8 Mar 05

ProMed also published lengthy review of use of poultry vaccines by David Swayne (poultry disease expert in US):

ProMed, 7 Mar 05 – this seems based on experience in US, rather than in China where vaccines used for thousands of millions of poultry (surely leading to even greater difficulties in ensuring vaccines stored and administered properly – should be given individually), and there are problems with fakes. Even so, notes vaccination is not perfect, and need other measures at same time. Very difficult for China, I think – partly because of scale. Also, shortcuts often taken, to cut costs etc (eg spate of coal mine disasters: to too many officials, safety isn’t a major issue).

Re virus persisting in Vietnam, even without vaccines:

Would this have been case without China as northern neighbour? China seems key place of origin and reservoir for H5N1 (with vaccination used before thumbs-up from FAO).
– H5N1(Z) in Vietnam surely came from China in first place; was it introduced only once, or continually?

Do domestic ducks really make a suitable “trojan horse” reservoir, especially given research showing H5N1 can evolve to less virulent forms even in domestic ducks? That is, if they were the key reservoir for Vietnam, shouldn’t H5N1 in the country have shifted more strongly away from the genotype Z?

What research has been done or is planned into movements of poultry and other captive birds between China and Vietnam; and indeed between these and other countries?

Dear Les:

Thank you again.

I forgot about domestic ducks when making the post; even here, some H5N1 can be lethal, but also know of sometimes infecting without symptoms.

The comment on bad vaccines by Robert Webster was in a presentation/document, titled Research Issues in Animal Surveillance and Pandemic Planning.

I’d thought of temperature for autumn, in China (read of cooler rainy seasons in more tropical places leading to H5N1 outbreaks perhaps increasing); not re the movements for festivals etc.

Martin

Hi Les:

Thank you for another informed post.

Haven’t had time yet to read the FAO document (60 plus pages I noticed!).

I’d thought China was using vaccine against H5N1 before use really sanctioned by FAO – and FAO had been leery re poultry flu vaccines (broadly, emergency use only).
“The current virulent strain of H5N1 emerged among vaccinated poultry in China.” said New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7338

Now, seems emergency is throughout China’s poultry industry.

http://english.people.com.cn/200511/15/eng20051115_221239.html

Might a virus strain that can thrive in vaccinated poultry also evolve to high virulence, compounding problems with H5N1?

Not that always need a virus strain that thrives with good vaccine, when there can be problems with counterfeits, and other bad vaccines in China. In 12 November South China Morning Post, a news item started:

Says many farmers in Heishan county had used a vaccine produced by
Inner Mongolia Jinguu Group, and this offered little protection against
the deadly disease. The vaccine was intended for testing, but not
supposed to be sold.

In a Nature commentary, Robert Webster and Diane Hulse argue for use of good poultry vaccines coupled with sentinel birds. But using vaccines isn’t straightforward, partly as also get sub-standard vaccines:

Controlling avian flu at the source

As well as China, Indonesia has adopted poultry vaccines, yet:
Indonesia says some poultry vaccine below standard

Vietnam in U-turn over bird flu vaccination is a New Scientist news item from May – about Vietnam about to start large-scale testing of poultry flu vaccines.

This article notes that Thailand allows vaccination only for fighting cocks, and free range ducks and chickens. Yet, I’ve seen reports of poultry vaccines smuggled into Thailand:
Thailand finds 2 million doses of bird flu vaccine smuggled in (26 Feb 2004 report)

So, it now seems you’re damned if you vaccinate, damned if you don’t.

With today’s poultry farms evidently serving as “disease factories” (as termed by science writer Wendy Orent) – where Paul Ewald’s theory re evolutionary biology predicts virulent strains of flu will evolve [and can persist while very sick birds can readily transmit disease], it seems the nasty H5N1 variant will remain with us.
Halting vaccination, coupled with fully effective culling (yes, this failed in Vietnam, so hardly hopeful) just might prove a short, extremely sharp shock that could eradicate it – like Hong Kong in 97, but on a massive scale.

Otherwise, need radical transformation of poultry farming – so very sick birds can no longer readily transmit H5N1 and other virulent flus. Something more like wild situation, where dead ducks don’t fly.

A shocking notion, now people hooked on apparently cheap chicken.
Yet Prof Peter Singer notes that we’re seeing something of the true costs of our chicken farms, in
`Factory farming’ is unnatural, unsustainable and dangerous

Post edited by: martin, at: 2005/12/11 00:55

Oh, doesn’t seem to matter how much repeat re trade etc; wild birds have been pronounced guilty in the Salem Bird Trials.

Today’s S China Morning Post has item on conclusion of H5N1 meeting called by World Bank and three UN food and health agencies (but no UN conservation agency).

Says action plan includes “study of migratory bird patterns to predict which countries will have H5N1 cases next”.
Never mind that still lack proof wild birds actually carrying H5N1 around – why no study, say, into why H5N1 so widespread in Asia in 2003/04, there were some outbreaks in Asia this spring and summer, yet no outbreaks in wiid waterbirds reported in Asia (or anywhere outside Russia, Romania and Croatia) this autumn?
Indeed, why do some “experts” (hmm) expect H5N1 to arrive in Africa around now, when migratory birds can’t even spread it around Asia?

Action plan apparently does not include a study into legal and illegal poultry trade, and wild bird trade – even though there is indeed proof this can transport avian flu over long distances. Odd, that.
(Where is IUCN in all this? FAO doing its best to absolve agriculture and blame birds – surely could use some balance?)

A blogger with the moniker Mike the Mad Biologist has written short critique of ideas from Ewald (and covered by Wendy Orent in several articles); seems to hinge largely on flu being transmissible before symptoms.

Evolution, Tradeoffs, Ignoring Biology, and Influenza

Doesn’t seem arguments are real substantial; not helped by what seems to me a rather curious quote re a colleague referring to "those stupid fucking natural history facts." Main one of these facts being again related to flu being transmissible before symptoms (tho as Orent notes, h5n1 is not transmissible – or darn near not transmissible – in humans). I’ve just added comment: Is flu just as contagious during asymptomatic phase. as when symptoms evident (and those with bad cases become immobile)? What of 1918 flu? Just coincidence it evolved – Ewald argues – during Western Front conditions? (And human flu otherwise not major problem; if it could readily evolve to high virulence, shouldn’t it do so more often, and even stay that way?) And why are regular bird flus "mild", yet crowd poultry in "disease factories" and get a flurry of highly pathogenic flus evolving? To me – a birder not biologist – latter seem to be neatly explained by ideas Orent writes of. (Any other theories able to explain these latter facts? Poultry farms would seem "good", accidental experiments that help confirm Ewald’s theory.)

just received latest FAO report on avian flu situation; sent comments to conservationists:

So, is FAO a little less sure of its role in the Salem Bird Trials?

“Wild birds seem to be one of the main AI [h5n1] carriers, but more research is urgently needed to fully understand their role in spreading the virus.”
– “seem to be”???
you mean, seem to be because of woefully sloppy thinking, and perhaps an exceptional case or two [Mongolia, maybe Romania]

There is plenty of data, plenty of info – several/all those on this email list well aware of it.
Instead of “more research”, simple application of a little brainpower would help show this is a Poultry Flu: it evolved in poultry, it spreads efficiently among and kills poultry. And even wild birds become victims, but not efficient vectors.
[conveniently, report omits ringing dates for swan in Hungary; powerful evidence it caught H5N1 in Croatia. In 1 Sept report, FAO applying Idiot’s Guide to Logic, by noting wild birds found to have h5n1 all sick or dying, so maybe they wouldn’t be able to carry it over long distance. Err, maybe? Whole report seemed aimed at showing wild birds responsible, and never mind the facts. Domenech’s view, it seems from press reports.]

Why no mention of vaccines, without which we might have eradicated h5n1?

How about some equivalent updates from conservation side (IUCN?), without blatant bias against wild birds (and without being pro agriculture, the very cradle of h5n1 and all high path bird flus causing outbreaks in past four decades).

ne China now blaming magpies as “migratory birds”, for goodness sake.
The Salem Bird Trials continue.

Scientific American blogger (editor of the magazine) made post with sume criticisms of evolutionary biology and flu at:

Don’t Fear The (Bird) Reaper

led to detailed responses: Bird Reaper, Pt II: Wendy Orent replies

Bird Reaper, Pt III: Paul Ewald replies

Above replies give useful info re evolutionary biology. I just fired off something simpler:

C’mon, the post with the muddled stuff about H5N1 and evolutionary biology’s a red herring. The real issue’s surely the remarkable Lindsay Beyerstein – remarkable not so much for her blog posts but because (from the photo), Dang, She’s Hot!

Otherwise, what with extensively citing an anonymous muddleheaded blogger who bandies big words about in sentences without clear conclusions (or, to demonstrate his belief in Unintelligent Design?) would suggest you were making a contribution to what the November Esquire calls Idiot America. Toodlepip (from citizen but not currently resident of UK, which has faults but at least doesn’t need Oprah to explain global warming)

Hi Lenny:

Thanks for the posts; I’ve added the photo to one.

In Hong Kong, one or two dead Little Egrets tested positive. Most of our Little Egrets are resident, and this/these birds at pond in an urban park, with ornamental ducks etc that were killed by H5N1 (at much the same time as H5N1 in local poultry farms)

Yes, smuggled birds could indeed be a problem.
Hope Candaba remains h5n1 free!

Martin

after sending the above image to a few people, I promptly received this – which actually appeared – illustrating serious bird flu item – in India Daily (someone there creative w Photoshop?)

from Taichi Kato, an ornithologist in Japan:

This news in Science magazine adequately summarizes the most up-to-date
facts and discussions in the role of migratory birds potentially spreading
the current H5N1 HPAI. If you can access to the online journal, make a
visit at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5747/426 .

“Are Wild Birds to Blame?”
Dennis Normile
Science 21 October 2005: 426-428.

[Some excerpts and comments]

As H5N1 reaches Europe, scientists debate the role of wild birds but agree
on the need for greater surveillance

But avian experts have been almost universally skeptical that wild birds are
spreading the virus. One reason is that sampling of tens of thousands of birds
has failed to turn up a single healthy wild bird carrying the pathogenic
strain of H5N1,

-> No direct evidence of carrying H5N1.

Evidence so far suggests that H5N1 kills wild ducks and geese nearly as
efficiently as it does chickens. “Dead ducks don’t fly” has been the refrain,
as avian experts point out that sick and dying birds simply can’t spread
viruses very far. Instead, epidemiologists investigating the virus’s jump,
even to geographically far-flung regions, keep turning up evidence suggesting
that the poultry trade and other human activities are responsible.

-> This statement is slightly a bit different from the recent WHO/OIE
fact summaries. They consider that H5N1 is less pathogenic to
migratory ducks and geese. I suspect that this WHO/OIE statement
is a precautionary one (to prepare the worst case) rather than
evidence-based analysis.

Now, however, evidence implicating wild birds is starting to convince even
some of the doubters. “Until about 2 months ago, I was pretty skeptical on
whether wild birds were playing a role,” says David Suarez, a virologist with
the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Southeast Poultry Research
Laboratory

What changed his mind, he says, was the death of 100 or so ducks, gulls,
geese, and swans from H5N1 at a remote lake in Mongolia that he believes
can’t be explained by human activities. And, he and others add, in an
unexpected twist, it’s beginning to look as though the culprits might not
be the long-suspected migratory waterfowl but another yet-unidentified wild
species.

-> This indicates that (even in the presence of European findings),
at least some epidemiologists consider the Mongolian cases most compelling.
[This is the same reason why I have been following the Mongolian case
in depth]. There must have been a far greater chance of human and poultry
contacts in crowded Europe than in Mongolia. There have even been a report
of poultry meat seized from Turkey even after the ban of poultry trade
from Turkey. In relation to the second suspected occurrence in Turkey,
the local media reported the presence of live chicken movements from the
region of the initial outbreak, sufficient to suspect the presence of
routine trade activities.

Nailing down the answer became even more urgent last week with the
confirmation that H5N1 has now entered Europe.

Everyone recognizes that if wild birds are involved, new strategies will be
needed to halt the virus’s spread to domestic flocks–and from them to people.
A growing number of scientists and organizations are calling for dramatically
increased global surveillance to profile all viruses circulating in wild
birds.

-> This is the true reason why European cases are so weighed; these
cases are not “better proofs” of transmission by migratory birds, but
are an alarm to the global community to face the problem as a serious
threat: all nations need to make a surveilance network of wild birds
and poultry, and there is an urgent need of international cooperation
for funding. The FAO and OIE statement, however, has been regarded as
fear by the public against wild birds…

So far, however, there is no known natural reservoir for highly pathogenic
avian influenza viruses. They emerge only after low-pathogenicity viruses
jump from water birds into chickens and turkeys.

-> We always need to stress that LPAI (natural strain) and HPAI have
different characteristics in the wildlife.

No one has yet uncovered the lineage of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain now
endemic in Asia. Presumably, it evolved from a low-pathogenicity H5N1 variant
circulating in waterfowl in southern China before the first known outbreak of
the disease in chickens in Hong Kong in 1997.

-> This information is precious for those who have been searching for
an ancestral strain of the current H5N1 HPAI: the answer is “not discovered
yet”.

When public health experts pointed to migratory birds as a likely source,
ornithologists and animal epidemiologists showed that the outbreaks did not
neatly fit any known migratory patterns. If migratory birds were carriers,
they argued, the virus should have turned up in the Philippines and Taiwan
by now, but it hasn’t.

-> This also explains why health officials (including WHO’s Lee, the
biotechnology company such as Recombinomics) usually stress on wild birds.
The more the possibilty of a pandemic is spoken, the more health officials
(rather than wildlife researchers) are asked to make a public statement,
likely addressing on migratory birds.

-> The recent discovery of H5N1 in smuggled birds in Taiwan is a notifiable
feat, since if a secondary outbreak may have arisen, that would have easily
been identified as the most compelling evidence of migratory birds
transmitting the virus (since migration is already in place).

What’s more, since the late 1990s, USDA has sampled more than 10,000 waterfowl
crossing the Bering Sea from Asia to Alaska, while University of Hong Kong
researchers have tested several thousand entering Hong Kong; neither group
has found a single healthy bird carrying the H5N1 virus.

-> Accumulating negative data.

Instead, human movements of infected poultry have spread the virus over
seemingly improbable distances. For instance, an outbreak of H5N1 among
poultry in Lhasa, Tibet, in January 2004 was traced to a shipment of chickens
from Lanzhou in China’s Gansu Province, about 1500 kilometers away. An even
more bizarre case surfaced in October 2004, when an air traveler was caught
at Brussels Airport with two crested hawk eagles, infected with H5N1, in his
carry-on bag. The smuggler had bought them at a Bangkok bird market on behalf
of a Belgian falconer.

-> Perhaps this would clarify the Lhasa case (which people would have
concerned about). Lanzhou is located not very far away from Qinghai lake
(any relation between them?).

More explanation about Qinghai case:

The die-off immediately raised alarms that surviving birds might carry the
virus to India and beyond. But, apparently because of infighting between
Chinese ministries and institutions, the government barred Chinese and outside
scientists from sampling or tracking the travel of surviving birds.
“It was a missed opportunity,”

Researchers are still wondering how the virus got to this remote corner of
China. Just after the Lake Qinghai outbreak, the virus turned up on a poultry
farm in the same province. This “makes it difficult to tell whether poultry
or wild birds brought the virus to the area,” says Suarez.

at Erkhel Lake. The group collected 774 samples from both dead and living
birds. USDA confirmed highly pathogenic H5N1 in dead birds–but found no
evidence of the virus in any samples from the live ducks, gulls, geese,
or swans.

is that wild birds carried the virus to Erkhel Lake and infected the birds
that eventually died. “We don’t know which species were responsible for
spreading the virus,”

Figuring out which species might be involved will be tough, others note,
as next to nothing is known about avian influenza except in waterfowl.

Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Since last March, he has collected more
than 6000 viral and serological samples from a variety of wild animals
throughout China, including 2000 samples from migratory and resident birds,
and is searching for H5N1.

George Gao, a virologist at CAS’s Institute of Microbiology in Beijing, has
collected several dozen serum samples from birds that survived the H5N1
outbreak at Qinghai Lake. If any test positive for antibodies to the H5N1
virus, says Gao, who is preparing to publish a paper, it would suggest that
some mildly infected water birds might be carrying the virus long distances.

-> This indicates (at least up to now) that no “virus positive” healthy
migratory bird was discovered after the outbreak at Qinghai Lake, pending
the publication of the mentioned work.

Thanks, Tony

Next time you log on, maybe read as well.

Martin