South Korea - Human bird flu contamination

[Lyro]

SOUTH KOREA CONFIRMS ADDITIONAL HUMAN BIRD FLU CONTAMINATION
September 15, 2006 (Yonhap)

Seoul -- South Korea's disease control agency confirmed Friday that five people have developed antibodies to the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu after taking part in the slaughtering and disposal of infected chickens and ducks.

The five people tested positive for bird flu antibodies, but none of them have shown symptoms of the disease as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said.

Source: http://english.yna.co.kr/Engnews/200...5113519E7.html

[Sharpe]

I'm always amazed by reports like this. Flagrant lack of OIE reporting, breaking of international law. What infected chickens are they talking about? When? Who? What?

[Theresa42]

Five more in SKorea infected by bird flu
Sep 15, 2006

SEOUL (AFP) - Five South Koreans were infected by the H5N1 bird flu virus two years ago while helping slaughter birds that had contracted the disease, health officials have said.

The five were exposed to the virus between late 2003 and early 2004 but have shown no symptoms, said the health ministry's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

They make up only the second known incident of human infection in South Korea, which slaughtered 5.3 million poultry during a bird flu epidemic two years ago.

At the time, more than 2,100 people who had helped with the destruction of the birds were tested for the virus.

In February, four other people were confirmed to have been infected with H5N1 but they also showed no symptoms of the disease as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO).

"Blood samples from five more people tested positive but they have been healthy, showing no symptoms of the disease," the health agency said in a statement.

The virus, known to pass from infected poultry to humans, has killed more than 140 people, mostly in Asia, since the current outbreak started in 2003.

South Korea declared itself free of bird flu in December last year. The country remains safe from the virus despite the new confirmed human infections, the agency said.

The WHO has warned that it could take years to eliminate the H5N1 virus from the environment. Experts say avian influenza has entrenched itself in much of Asia and is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060915...a_060915060346

[Theresa42]

South Korea says 5 more infected with bird flu 2003-04
Sept 15, 2006

SEOUL (Reuters) - Five more South Koreans were infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus about three years ago but none of them developed any serious illnesses, officials said on Friday after recently completed testing on old samples.

South Korea, which did not have comprehensive testing at the time, sent samples of 318 poultry industry workers taken during an outbreak in late 2003 and early 2004 to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2005 for further examination.

Of those workers, four South Koreans were infected, the CDC has said. The government said in February the four did not develop major illnesses.

The results prompted South Korean health officials to send samples to the CDC from another 2,109 people and of these, five were also infected, the health agency said on Friday.

"The five did not develop major illnesses and have no strain to transmit bird flu," the Korea Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.

About 400,000 poultry at South Korean farms were infected by bird flu between December 2003 and March 2004, but no human cases were reported at that time.

All of the samples sent by South Korea to the United States were from people involved in the culling of about 5 million poultry.

There have been no reported cases of bird flu in South Korea since the 2003-2004 outbreak.

The World Health Organisation said on Thursday two cases in Indonesia had been recognised retroactively, including one where human-to-human transmission could not be ruled out.

The latest number of cases globally stands at 246 since 2003 not including the South Korean cases, with 144 deaths.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060915/3/2pxwz.html

[Sally Furniss]

Previous story about infected Korean poultry workers.
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1366

[AlaskaDenise]

It would be interesting to see precisely what strain infected these people.

Did it have all of the current known virulence mutations? Especially the NS1 mutation, although I believe some lethal NS1 originally "migrated" south in swine from North Korea in 2004 (via a lab-escaped WS/33 H1N1).

see http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12...hronology.html

.

[HenryN]

Originally Posted by AlaskaDenise

It would be interesting to see precisely what strain infected these people.

Did it have all of the current known virulence mutations? Especially the NS1 mutation, although I believe some lethal NS1 originally "migrated" south in swine from North Korea in 2004 (via a lab-escaped WS/33 H1N1).

see http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12...hronology.html

.

The Korean H5N1 was very much like H5N1 from Japan. They conributed to the evolution of the Qinghai strain (which, like other Z genotypes has a 5 aa deletion in NS).

[HenryN]

Originally Posted by vaffie

I'm always amazed by reports like this. Flagrant lack of OIE reporting, breaking of international law. What infected chickens are they talking about? When? Who? What?

These infections are from 2003.

[HenryN]

Commentary at

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/09...ies_Korea.html

[Theresa42]

Five Koreans had H5N1 virus but no illness

Sep 21, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – South Korea said last week that five workers who helped cull poultry nearly 3 years ago showed evidence of past infection with H5N1 avian influenza though they had never been ill.

The Sep 15 report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the five workers had tested positive for antibodies to the H5N1 virus but had never had symptoms.

Samples from the workers were tested by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a Sep 15 Reuters report.

"The five did not develop major illnesses and have no strain to transmit bird flu," Reuters quoted Korea's Center for Disease Control and Prevention as saying.

Four other South Korean poultry workers were previously found to have H5N1 antibodies without having been ill, bringing the total to nine, according to Reuters.

South Korea had outbreaks of H5N1 disease in poultry in December 2003 and early 2004, but no human cases were reported. About 400,000 birds were infected and about 5 million were destroyed to contain the disease, the Reuters report said.

At the time, the government sent samples from 318 poultry industry workers to the US CDC for testing, which identified the four workers who had antibodies, the story said. Korean officials reported last February that the four had never been ill.

But the findings prompted Korean officials to send samples from another 2,109 workers to the US for testing, which led to identification of the five additional cases, according to Reuters.

No outbreaks of H5N1 avian flu have been reported in South Korea since March 2004, say reports the government filed with the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

Researchers have suggested that the H5N1 strain that struck Korea in 2003 and 2004 was less pathogenic for humans than the strains that infected people in Vietnam and Thailand.

In a report in the March 2005 Journal of Virology, US and South Korean scientists said they had found differences between the Korean and Vietnamese H5N1 isolates in all eight viral genes. In addition, Korean and Thai strains of H5N1 differed in their surface protein (hemagglutinin and neuraminidase) genes, the scientists said. The researchers also found that the Korean strain had a low level of pathogenicity in mice.

A few asymptomatic and mild human cases of H5N1 infection have been reported previously. When the virus first infected humans in Hong Kong in 1997, a small number of poultry cullers, household contacts of patients, and healthcare workers tested positive despite having no serious illness, according to reports in medical journals.

In addition, two elderly relatives of H5N1 patients in Vietnam tested positive for the virus in March 2005, according to news reports at the time. And in January of this year, a World Health Organization official reported that two young Turkish brothers tested positive but were not sick, according to news services.

However, recent serologic surveys of healthy people with a history of exposure to H5N1 have found almost no one with evidence of infection. Most recently, researchers reported that among 351 Cambodian villagers who had extensive contact with infected poultry, none had antibodies to the virus. Their study was published this month in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/con...2106korea.html


See also:

March 2005 Journal of Virology article on H5N1 isolates from South Korea

Sep 7 CIDRAP News story "Cambodian study suggests mild H5N1 cases are rare"

Jan 11, 2006, CIDRAP News story "WHO says Turkish cases may yield new findings on H5N1"

Sep 29, 2005, New England Journal of Medicine article with information on serologic surveys in people exposed to H5N1
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/13/1374

Oct Emerging Infectious Disease article on Cambodian serologic surveys
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no10/06-0424.htm