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to correct what I said in chat last night... here's a map. Looking at it now, I wonder if H7 picked up a bit of H5 genetic material from overflying H5 birds?
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Last edited by AlaskaDenise; July 27, 2007, 05:21 PM.
"The next major advancement in the health of American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself"-- John Knowles, Former President of the Rockefeller Foundation
The head groom at a riding stables next to the mid-Norfolk farm at the centre of a bird flu outbreak fears she too has contracted the H7N3 strain of the disease.
A poultry worker at Whitford Lodge Farm, North Tuddenham, near Dereham has already been diagnosed with the H7N3 strain of the disease in the form of the eye infection conjunctivitis.
Today it emerged that a woman, who works at the neighbouring Kimblewick Equestrian Centre, Whitford Road, may also have been struck down by the same strain.
Emma Mooney, 25, pictured, is head groom at the stables and said her eyes started to become irritated on Friday afternoon. ?At about 2.30pm my eyes started really itching; I just went to rub them like they were dry and didn't think anything of it,? she said.
?I left it until Friday night and phoned the helpline; it was out of hours so they gave me the number for NHS Direct.?
Ms Mooney said they were not even aware that bird flu had arrived in Norfolk and told her to go up to the hospital to have it checked out.
?I went up the hospital and spoke to a nurse who put a mask on my face so I couldn't breathe on anyone and then I was put in isolation,? said the mother, who was then seen by a doctor. ?He didn't know bird flu was as close to the hospital as it was. They put some fluid in my eye and looked through a machine into my eye, but couldn't see that I had damaged it in any way.? She waited for news of her condition at the hospital for about an hour-and-a-half before being told to go home and to come back if they heard anything different.
?It's quite frightening really,? she said. ?We're right next door and we weren't told anything. My boss Sarah woke up and there were reporters in her drive.?
Although she had been given anti-viral drugs, Ms Mooney said she was anxious to know if she had contracted the disease. ?If I had a blood test or something to guarantee 100 per cent that there was nothing to worry about, but just someone saying don't worry about it, go home is not good enough,? she said.
?I've got a son who's 19-months- old. They are saying it can't be passed from person to person, but they put a mask on me and put me in an isolation room so can it? I'm a bit confused about what's going on.?
Ms Mooney, who lives in Swanton Morley with her partner Adrian Stubbs and son Harvey, said her eyes were sore from rubbing them so much, although not as bad as they were first of all.
The man with the conjunctivitis, who has not been named, has the low pathogenic H7N3 strain of avian flu which does not transmit easily from person to person. He reported his illness on Thursday and the people he lives with have been given advice by health officials.
Between 60 and 70 other people, including members of the State Veterinary Service and poultry workers, have been issued with anti-viral drugs as a precaution. Swabs and blood tests have also been taken from some and their health has been monitored.
? Are you worried you have contracted bird flu? Call Evening News reporter Peter Walsh on (01603) 772439 or email peter.walsh@archant.co.uk
I fear, like this article, that the only info that is going to be available will be via word of mouth. I'm gaining a growing sense of "information containment" as things progress.
They need to be aware of the H7 in Holland - it passed to 50% of the contacts of people who were exposed to infected poultry. Read here and several articles here. There is also good coverage at EffectMeasure.
I won't rest easy until we see the sequences. And how long has the UK taken to release those?
I would the British peoplewould be up in arms after that sequence informaton.
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Last edited by AlaskaDenise; May 1, 2006, 04:05 PM.
"The next major advancement in the health of American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself"-- John Knowles, Former President of the Rockefeller Foundation
May 02, 2006 Vets track spread of bird flu strain
By Valerie Elliott
Blood samples from birds culled in Norfolk show they had the H7N3 virus for longer than was thought
GOVERNMENT vets were checking farms in Norfolk last night after it emerged that a bird flu virus has been present in Britain for at least a month.
The latest theory is that a free-range egg company, which kept 15,300 chickens outdoors on two farms, is now the likely source of the infection, probably after some contact with an infected wild bird.
More than 50,000 chickens have now been culled on Norfolk Road Farm and Mowles Manor Farm at North Tuddenham, owned by Geoffrey Dann and his son, Simon.
Blood samples from birds on their farm showed that they had been exposed to the H7N3 virus as long ago as four weeks.
This company is less than half a mile from Banhams chicken breeding farm at Whitford Lodge, where 35,000 birds were culled last week after the low pathogenic avian flu strain was confirmed in the county. Birds on the free range unit, however, suffered only a mild form of the flu and none died from the infection. They had to be culled because H7N3 flu is a notifiable disease.
It is still unclear how the virus was transported from the egg farm to the Banhams chicken farm, where it killed some 400 chickens and triggered a drop in egg production by other birds.
Such a reaction to avian flu is expected on intensive commercial units where there are large numbers of birds who live indoors at close quarters.
State vets have been unable to find a link between the egg and the chicken farms. An infected wild bird, or its faeces on a worker?s foot, or vehicle, are still thought to be the most likely routes for the infection.
Farmers around the country have also been reporting suspicious signs of sickness or a fall in egg production and the Veterinary Laboratory Agency, in Weybridge, Surrey, is testing numerous samples.
So far, however, all tests have been negative.
Officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are determined to ensure that the country?s ?600 million-a-year chicken export trade is maintained. Ministers will today make representations to the Japanese Embassy and Hong Kong High Commission, in London, over their trade bans against Britain.
Japan has halted all trade in eggs, chicken and breeding birds from Britain, and Hong Kong has banned produce from Norfolk.
Such bans are in breach of international law, however, and can be imposed only if a highly pathogenic bird flu strain is present. So far, government vets have found only the less virulent H7N3 strain. [Hmmmmm.... All the more reason to keep the high-path stuff quiet, eh?]
- International quarantine measures, such as restricting air travel from countries with a serious influenza outbreak, would do little to halt the spread of a pandemic, a study by British scientists has found (Mark Henderson writes).
A strain of flu that passed easily from person to person would move around the world more quickly than it could be detected, making airport closures largely ineffective, according to computer simulations by the Health Protection Agency. For restrictions on air travel from infected countries to delay a pandemic, it would be necessary for almost all travel to be stopped immediately as soon as the virus emerges, scientists found.
The findings, published today in the open-access journal Public Library of Science Medicine, suggest that the costs of restricting international air travel in a pandemic are likely to outweight the benefits.
The latest breaking UK, US, world, business and sport news from The Times and The Sunday Times. Go beyond today's headlines with in-depth analysis and comment.
...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. - Sherlock Holmes
...the costs of restricting international air travel in a pandemic are likely to outweight the benefits.
So those lives that might be saved by slowing a pandemic long enough to get some vaccine to some people, aren't worth the costs?
Lest there be any doubt what your life is worth......it is not worth loosing profits for industries! The truly "disposable" economy - "single use" people.
Even more reason to educate and protect ourselves.
Gotta give our government credit - they did warn us and suggest buying tuna and powdered milk. That's more than some industries want to do!
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"The next major advancement in the health of American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself"-- John Knowles, Former President of the Rockefeller Foundation
So those lives that might be saved by slowing a pandemic long enough to get some vaccine to some people, aren't worth the costs?
Lest there be any doubt what your life is worth......it is not worth loosing profits for industries! The truly "disposable" economy - "single use" people.
Even more reason to educate and protect ourselves.
Gotta give our government credit - they did warn us and suggest buying tuna and powdered milk. That's more than some industries want to do!
So those lives that might be saved by slowing a pandemic long enough to get some vaccine or additional preparedness (my addition outide of the quote to some people, aren't worth the costs? [/COLOR]"
"Predictable is Preventable" by Safety Expert Dr. Gordon Graham.
Government scientists are carrying out a second round of tests at a smallholding outside Dereham to rule out bird flu infection.
Animal health experts from Defra returned to the premises in Paper Street in Yaxham on Tuesday after earlier tests on about 160 birds for the H7N3 virus proved inconclusive.
The department previously visited the smallholding on Sunday as part of routine tests on poultry keepers within the recently extended 3km surveillance zone, which was set up around the three infected North Tuddenham farms.
Smallholding owner Chris Garner did not want to comment on the tests on the mix of chickens, geese and guinea fowl, which are kept for friends and family.
A Defra spokesman said: "Both visits are purely routine and part of continuing surveillance work to make sure the area is clear of the virus.
"Some of the tests carried out during the visit on Sunday were inconclusive in that they were neither negative nor positive.
"They had to return to redo the tests but this is something which happens quite often when a large number of birds are tested."
Regional member of the National Farmer's Union poultry board Nigel Joice said he was pleased with Defra's attempts to pin down the source of the infection by tracking movements of and testing poultry but said it was slight concern that there was still no strong leads.
This week local Conservative MEP Geoffrey Van Orden visited the State Veterinary Service at Bury St Edmunds where the Local Disease Control Centre has been established.
He said: "Clearly the problem in the Dereham area has been dealt with very professionally and the necessary surveillance and protective measures have been put in place."
In response to the article claiming the UK's bird tests may be missing the avian flu virus, I would like to say that the British testing programme is intended to detect the incursion of H5N1 into the UK via wild bird populations (15 April, p 12). This is based upon the detection of viral nucleic acid using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Björn Olsen refers to surveillance for the "virus" itself in his programme surveying healthy wild birds. The survival of infectious virus may well be enhanced in aqueous solution but our laboratory testing is based upon the detection of viral RNA that is present even when infectious virus does not survive.
Studies are in progress to produce validated data on virus survival in different media, but unpublished data from experimental studies here at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency indicate good viability of viral RNA on dried swabs stored at 4 °C. Placing faecal material into aqueous solution may be detrimental to the stability of the RNA if the pH is not buffered to neutral values. The procedures used conform to international protocols endorsed by the European Union's wild bird surveillance programme.
We have not seen the validation data relating to the method used by Olsen but direct comparisons between "dried swabs" and the use of transport medium will be important. The survival properties of viruses in different environments and media are currently being studied at the VLA, and part of this will be stability of virus from faeces. From Graeme Laver
The survey you reported seems to have isolated fewer than expected avian influenza viruses from wild birds in the UK, and the way the samples were collected and stored could be to blame. On one of our trips to the Great Barrier Reef in the 1970s we collected 642 cloacal swabs from healthy shearwaters and terns, from which we isolated nine low-pathogenicity influenza viruses. Other surveys seem to have had a similar isolation rate.
We used dry swabs to collect the samples from the birds' cloacas. These were immediately put into tubes containing 2 millilitres of tissue culture growth medium and then snap frozen in liquid nitrogen. The samples were never allowed to dry out or stored at the temperature of a domestic freezer, which would have destroyed the virus, for sure.
Nowadays, cloacal samples are tested for virus using PCR to amplify RNA, so virus in the samples does not have to be kept "alive" unless viable virus is required for further experiments. If liquid nitrogen is not easily available, cloacal swabs for PCR can be put straight into ethanol, which destroys the virus but preserves the RNA.
I don't know if the refrigerated swabs that had dried out (as reported in your article) were still suitable for PCR analysis, but I suspect from the results that they were not. But why on earth do this? Putting the samples into ethanol is no big deal. Murrumbateman, New South Wales, Australia Debora MacKenzie writes:
<SYMBOL SRC="/data/images/archive/maths/bull.gif"></SYMBOL>We asked the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which runs the VLA, whether it would evaluate different methods for preserving bird flu virus in field samples. DEFRA said it is "looking into the possibility of conducting a trial in this area".
From issue 2551 of New Scientist magazine, 13 May 2006, page 22
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Printed on Mon Feb 05 14:15:22 GMT 2007
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