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The news is just breaking that bird flu of an unspecified type has been detected at Easter Norton Farm, near Edinburgh's airport.  Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland and a bustling city.   

Bird flu alert in Edinburgh

By GARETH ROSE and CHARLOTTE BAILEY

BIRD flu is believed to have been detected at an Edinburgh farm raising fears of a potential outbreak in the Capital.

Routine tests carried out by farm workers found signs of the virus in some birds at Easter Norton Farm, near Edinburgh Airport.

Veterinary experts do not believe it is the more dangerous H5N1 strain of the virus – which is potentially deadly to humans in rare cases.

Other strains are understood to carry no health risks to humans.

Secondary tests are currently being carried out by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in an effort to confirm this theory. The results are expected by the end of the day.

At Easter Norton Farm this afternoon, there was a sign on the gate banning all entry without permission and ordering that all vehicles which do enter have their wheels disinfected first, under the Animal Health Act 1981 and Avian Influenza or Influenza of Avian Origin in Mammals. A bucket of disinfectant was left by the gate.

William Pollock, from the farm, said: "Nobody is allowed in or out, that is all we can say just now."

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "At the moment routine follow up tests are being carried out. There are no causes for concern."

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Bird-flu-alert-in-Edinburgh.3880699.jp

The Chinese authorities have ruled out SARS and H5N1 avian influenza as causes of the respiratory distress that forced the closing of all primary schools in Hong Kong this week. 

Three young children have died as a result of the outbreak of seasonal influenza, according to the World Health Organization.  That is the good news wrapped in the bad news about this year's epidemic.  Although the Chinese authorities claim this year's seasonal epidemic is no worse than in previous years, that rule is not holding true throughout most of the rest of the planet.

Hong Kong is not completely out of hot water, however.  Yet another bird -- this time, a peregrine falcon -- has tested positive for H5N1, making it the second such case in a month.  It was found sick on Ma Wan island and died the same day it was tested.  A heron was found dead in Hong Kong's Ocean Park aviary last month, and it too tested positive for H5N1.  Authorities closed the popular tourist destination's aviary for three weeks.  Wild birds in HK are now routinely testing positive for H5N1, and five such positive tests have happened since January. the link below takes you to the International Herald-Tribune story of last month, where a dead magpie tested positive for H5N1.  By the way, the magpie was found in a Hong Kong food market.   http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/15/asia/AS-GEN-Hong-Kong-Bird-Flu.php.

This disclosure means that for all intent and purpose, H5N1 is regaining its endemic stature within Hong Kong's wild bird population (as if it ever truly lost that status).

Killer flu in Hong Kong not bird flu

 

The deaths of three children in Hong Kong from a virulent form of influenza has forced health officials to close all of the district's elementary schools.

The outbreak has caused alarm despite the government's insistence that SARS or bird flu is not implicated.

The World Health Organization has also confirmed that the outbreak appears to just be the common flu.

The concern over the outbreak and the three deaths has nevertheless prompted many to don face masks when they venture out in public to protect themselves.

More than 550,000 children are currently out of school because of the outbreak and as yet it has not been announced when the schools will reopen.

Pictures in the media of people wearing face masks, locked school gates and temperature tests are redolent of the SARS outbreak in 2003 which killed 299 people.

While the SARS crisis has not returned the seven-year-old boy who died on Tuesday of a respiratory infection was the third child to die of flu-like symptoms in the last two weeks.

Of the school's 700 students 35 have fallen ill with flu-like illnesses and six of them have been hospitalised.

Investigations into the exact cause of death of the children are still ongoing but authorities say are taking no chances and closing the schools had more to do with soothing the anxiety of parents than an impending health crisis.

Other measures employed involve the shortening of visiting hours for acutely-ill patients in public hospitals, daily announcements of outbreaks and a public education campaign.

Infection control measures at hospitals have also been upgraded as Hong Kong is in the midst of the peak flu season.

Thomas Tsang the controller of the Centre for Health Protection however says there is no evidence at this stage that the flu season was any worse than in the past two years.

Critics say health officials have failed to learn lessons from the SARS outbreak and preventive measures should have been taken earlier.

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=36252

Fido and Fluffy may be reservoirs of the deadly bacteria -- or maybe we sicken them.

According to a story by MSNBC.com's health writer JoNel Aleccia, we may be getting sick from our pets.  Or, perhaps, we are sick, and we give sickness to them.  A recent study from the New England Journal of medicine reinforces the link between staph, and MRSA in particular, and our house pets and other domesticated animals. Here's an excerpt:

“We’ve found MRSA in dogs, cats, rabbits, pigs — even marine mammals,” said J. Scott Weese, an associate professor of pathobiology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Horses and cows also are routinely affected.

So far, it’s clear that humans and pets can be colonized with the MRSA bacteria, said John R. Middleton, an associate professor of food animal medicine and surgery at the University of Missouri.  That doesn’t mean they’ve got active infections, just that they’re carriers of the germs that are resistant to most frontline antibiotics.

An ongoing study of some 600 people-pet households across the U.S. showed that staph aureus germs were present in nearly 28 percent of people and about 13 percent of pets. About 10 percent of households had both a human and an animal colonized.

MRSA, the drug-resistant strain, was detected in more than 5 percent of humans and about 3 percent of dogs and cats, Middleton said.

What’s not so clear is whether people got MRSA from their pets — or whether they gave it to them, researchers said. One theory is that pets may pick up the bacteria from people, but then serve as reservoirs, harboring the bugs so they can reinfect humans.

“Pets could be innocent bystanders, or they could be significant sources of infection,” Weese said. “They’re probably somewhere in between.”

The hallways of Hong Kong's schools are eerily silent today.  That is because in the wee hours this morning, the city's government ordered all schools closed early for the upcoming Easter holiday.

The reason:  Influenza, or something like it, has wrought havoc upon Hong Kong's students.  Severe outbreaks of respiratory virus have erupted in 25 of the city's schools in recent days, and several children have died. 

The situation is not any easier in Hong Kong's hospitals, as some 15,000 hours of overtime have been clocked by nursing staff alone within the past two weeks (hat-tip to ironorehopper of Flutrackers).

Newspaper accounts vary as to the source(s) of the illness.  Some call it flu, while others still refer to the malady as "flu-like". At any rate, this illness is now accompanied by another, possibly even more frightening disease:  Encephalitis.  The most recent HK death was a seven-year-old boy who died yesterday of encephalitis associated with flu-like symptoms.  The mention of the very word "encephalitis" among flubies strikes severe apprehension at the best and outright horror at the worst.  Encephalitis Lethargica, as you recall, was the "secondary pandemic" to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19.  Think "Awakenings" with DeNiro and Robin Williams. Encephalitis Lethargica existed from 1917 to 1928, when it mysteriously vanished from the planet.

Now here's the interesting latest item:  The nation's leading SARS and respiratory distress experts are being called in, apparently in an effort to pin down the origin(s) of the illness.  It makes one wonder:  If the BBC is saying (as recently as this morning) that this is a "mystery" flu, and the SARS gang is being called in, what in Sam Hill is going on in Hong Kong?

Now add to this discussion the recent words of Zhong Nanshan (see my recent blog post), and you have a lot of wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in southern China right now.

After a period of inactivity and relatively mild human cases of H5N1 avian influenza, the governate of Al Fayyum, Egypt is aflame with activity. 

In the past few days, two confirmed influenza patients -- a 25-year-old woman and an eight-year-old boy -- have been confirmed to be suffering from bird flu.  The woman is dead; the boy is stable.

Now, two more suspected human cases have been transferred from Fayoum, to Cairo's top bird flu hospital.  The two cases are a 33-year-old woman and a 27-year-old of undetermined gender.  Both of these cases seem to have come from within the city of Fayoum, and the other new cases were not far removed from the city.

Making matters even more shaky is the revelation that two siblings of these newer cases have also exhibited flu-like symptoms.  Fortunately, when Egyptian doctors suspect H5N1 human infection, and even if the patient tests negative initially, they hold the patient for observation for another 48 hours and retest. 

The proximity of Al Fayuum to the Nile can be seen on the map.  The city of Fayoum itself is apparently quite a sight.  According to multiple Websites, Fayoum Oasis is the largest oasis in the country, and the city has a population of approximately two million people.  I have no census on the number of ducks, chickens and other domesticated birds.

It has been awhile since we had a legitimate Egyptian cluster of cases to contend with.  that stretches back to late 2006 and the famous Gharibya cluster. Gharibya is also on the Nile Delta, about 80 kilometers northwest of Cairo.  In that cluster, three people from the same family died.  We thought we might have an even larger cluster in the same locale this past January, but tests were negative-to-inconclusive.

This year, flu-like symptoms have been especially prevalent in the upper Nile Delta, and based on past performance, Gharbiya was on the hot list for Tamiflu  distribution.  You can refresh recollections of Egypt earlier this year through my posts from January, 2008 (search "Egypt" and "2008"). 

Also of great concern is the explosion in H5N1 mutations within Egypt.  Speculation from Dr. Henry Niman and others is that these new mutations can be best explained by the virus's amazing knack of evolving beyond the ability of H5N1 vaccinations of domestic poultry to protect flocks.  Many of these H5N1 vaccines have come from Asia, and informed speculation is that these vaccines were not tweaked for the Qinghai derivative that is now clearly and unquestionably endemic to Egypt.  The old "What does not kill me makes me stronger" statement is perfectly tailored for influenza.  Especially this influenza.

Two other factoids can also be folded into the discussion.  Back in August, 2007, H7 was officially detected in a duck in the upper Nile Delta.  As far as strictly avian influenzas go, H7 is notoriously easy for humans to catch.  Ask the Welsh, Dutch and Germans about that.  And back in January of this year, the Egyptian government expressed concern about the possibility that pigs were becoming reservoirs of H5N1 virus.  Some local governments tried to cull swine, but were usually overruled by contingents of very angry farmers.

Finally, we also know that seasonal flu has been very bad in Egypt, as it has been bad everywhere.  I cannot find the subtypes responsible, but January reports from Europe were pointing to H1N1.  As we know, H1N1 in Europe and in the United States has suddenly shown some resistance to Tamiflu.  In Norway, admittedly a loooooong way away from Egypt, that Tamiflu resistance rate is approaching seventy percent (70%). 

So conditions in Egypt may be approaching "perfect storm" status.  We have another cluster situation in Fayoum; potentially infected pigs across the nation; H7 circulating in the northern Nile Delta; seasonal flu raging across the Delta; and mutant Egyptian Qinghai H5N1 with an apparent resurgent ability to kill at least half of its victims.

March could wind up being an extremely interesting and taxing month for all.