Bird Flu threat negligible to non-existent

Bird Flu threat negligible to non-existent

Geoffrey Lean / London independent | April 9 2006

Tattered, mangled, dead and decomposing, it lay on the slipway of the pretty little Scottish harbour. At any other time, and in many other places, the swan would have passed utterly unnoticed, just another little tragedy in an unforgiving natural world. But in Cellardyke, Fife, at the beginning of Spring, it has been greeted as a harbinger of doom.

Dead swans have long been considered unlucky. But this one was found last week to be infected with H5N1, the vicious bird flu virus that is sweeping Far East and which scientists believe could spark a human pandemic, killing more than 100,000 people.

For months, Britain has been watching apprehensively as wild birds carrying the virus spread through Europe, infecting 16 countries and coming closer. As winter gave way to spring, many hoped we had escaped, at least for the time being. But now, as The Independent on Sunday exclusively predicted last summer, when the Government was dismissing the possibility, it has finally arrived. The virus was identified, as fate would have it, on the day the Government was starting its first full-scale trial to see how prepared it is to cope with a serious outbreak of the disease. Experts and officials from throughout the country had converged on government offices in London's Page Street, and on centres in Leeds, Cardiff, Gloucester, and Bury St Edmunds, for Exercise Hawthorne, a two-day simulation to check the effectiveness of its plans.

Faced with the real thing, Dr Debby Reynolds, the Government's chief vet, had to halt the simulation. It mattered little that the plans were untested, she suggested, because "we are already in a high state of readiness".

Tell that to Tina Briscoe, a 68-year-old grandmother, who tried to report the dead swan, yards from her home, on the slip where children constantly play. She is the first person to put the Government's plans, which rely overwhelmingly on "early detection" of the virus in birds and taking quick action, properly to the test.

Fearing that the carcass may be contaminated by bird flu virus, Mrs Briscoe, a cancer research technician at nearby St Andrew's University, reported the dead bird to the local police, before 5pm on Wednesday 29 March.

But instead of telling her to ring the government hotline specially set up as part of the first line of defence against the disease, they advised her to contact the RSPCA. Eventually, after involving a neighbour, Dan Young, a molecular biologist at the university, the right call was made. But by now it was 8.45pm. The carcass was not picked up until the next day.

"There was no urgency," she said. "They were quite happy to leave it there overnight. I expected a quicker reaction. It seems a bit sloppy to me."

The only precaution taken until the carcass was removed was by Mr Young, who put a chair by the bird with a makeshift sign, "Please Do Not Touch the Swan". It was a wise move: Turkish children have died from the flu after playing with infected birds.

The remains were picked up and samples were sent to the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey, arriving on Friday night. But though they can be processed in hours, it was not until late Wednesday that the scientists identified the swan had died of a particularly virulent form of bird flu, and not until Thursday that this was confirmed to be H5N1.

The delay has provoked criticism. Edwina Currie, who knows a thing or two about bird diseases having lost her job as a Health minister in the Thatcher era after warning of salmonella in eggs, said: "They need a real shaking up. Eight days is not good; eight hours is more like it. In eight days in 2001 foot and mouth spread across the country."

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) stated that as far as could be told at the time, this sample was just one among many, and had to take its place in a lengthening queue. It says, with some justice: "It is important to note that since 21 February the lab at Weybridge has tested more than 1,100 samples as part of our routine surveillance of the country's wild bird population. There was nothing to indicate that this sample should take priority over the other samples at the lab."

After the results did begin to come in, the Government's untested plans creaked belatedly into effect, with a proliferation of "zones" designed primarily to stop the virus passing into flocks of domestic chickens, with potentially drastic consequences for the poultry industry.

On Wednesday night, a three-kilometre "protection zone", where movements of poultry and eggs were restricted, was imposed around Cellardyke, surrounded by a 10km "surveillance zone", where the health of birds was to be checked.

And on Thursday, after the presence of H5N1 was confirmed, yet another zone, a "wild bird risk area", was set up to cover 2,500 square kilometres along the Fife and Angus coasts. Poultry farmers in this area were told to bring some 260,000 free-range birds indoors to stop them being infected, but only "where practicable".

This is in marked contrast to many European countries - including France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and the Czech Republic - where all the free-range birds in the country have been ordered inside, mostly before the virus even reached them.

Critics believe that this belated and limited action may prove to be a case of closing the henhouse door after the virus has got inside. But ministers believe, even now, that a nationwide order would be disproportionate. This is likely to be given only if more birds are found with the disease.

Seventy people, covered in full protective clothing, are out this weekend, picking up a host of dead birds reported by a newly alerted public. The Weybridge laboratory is working round the clock to analyse them.

"If only the swan could have sung its song before dying," said a senior civil servant yesterday.

The future depends crucially on the dead bird's past, and we know very little about it. We do know the swan seems to have had the disease for about two weeks before it was picked up 10 days ago. But we do not know if it is a one-off, a sick bird that had flown in from an already infected part of Europe, or if it got the disease from another bird in Britain, which would suggest that the virus has been circulating here for weeks.
Extraordinarily, we do not even know what kind of swan it was. Its head was missing from its rotting body. Tests to establish its species were not performed at the same time as it was analysed for the virus, and are only being done now.

The result will be vital. If it is a mute swan, as the Government has assumed, it was almost certainly resident in Britain, because very few of these migrate. This means that it would have had to have been infected by another bird, suggesting the virus is on the loose and will cause more trouble. But if it is a whooper swan, the other most likely candidate, we may just have had a very lucky escape. It could have been on its way from infected parts of Germany to its summer home in Iceland, fallen ill, and collapsed into the North Sea to be washed into Cellardyke harbour.

We would not necessarily be out of the woods; the swan's carcass had been partially eaten, which suggests that some creatures, possibly seagulls, may have picked up the virus with their snacks. But that would make it much less likely the H5N1 virus is already established in Britain.

In the worst-case scenario, the greatest danger is to poultry. If it got into flocks it could devastate the industry, leading to foot-and-mouth-style mass slaughter and plummeting sales of chicken and eggs.

Even bringing birds indoors throughout the country could doom Britain's flourishing free-range business, if the virus persisted and the precaution was prolonged indefinitely.

The danger to people ranges from negligible to non-existent. Despite some signs of panic, and at least one cancelled holiday in Cellardyke, the dead swan posed no danger to anyone who did not actually touch it with bare hands.

If the virus does spread among wild birds, the main danger will only be to people who touched them or their droppings, though they could also be infected by cats or dogs that ate them. If it got into poultry, there would be no hazard if it were quickly stamped out through culling the infected birds, except possibly to those who worked with them.

But people in Britain do not live at close quarters with their chickens as they do in South-east Asia, Africa, western Turkey or the other homes of the 200 or so people who to date have caught the disease from poultry. Even eating the meat and eggs of chickens with H5N1 poses no hazard, if these are cooked through, though there could be a hazard from preparing the raw chickens or from handling eggs coated with droppings.

Fortunately, Britons seem to have got this message. So far, there is no sign of the precipitous drops in poultry and egg sales that hit farmers in Greece, Italy and France when the virus appeared in their countries.

This is not to say that H5N1 is not a virus to be feared. It could, indeed, as flu experts warn, spawn a massive global pandemic against which we have few defences. But for that to happen the virus will have to mutate so it becomes highly infectious between people.

There is every chance it will. Mutation is what flu viruses are good at. The most common prediction is that it will do so by infecting a person who already has normal flu; the two viruses would combine, making an infectious version of H5N1, against which no one has immunity.

There are signs that it is changing to become more infectious and pass more easily from birds to people. But most experts believe the much-feared pandemic strain is still two mutations away. The most important issue is that H5N1 at present infects its victims deep in their lungs. This is one reason why it is so deadly, but it also means it is not easily passed on. For that to happen, it would need to mutate to enable it to infect the upper respiratory tract. That could happen at any time, or not for years.

And it might never happen at all, although most authorities are convinced it will. At that point, air travel is likely to sweep it round the world in a very short time. So the real threat to people will almost certainly come from a smartly dressed passenger at a soulless modern airport, not from a bedraggled lump of flesh and feathers on a picturesque Scottish slipway.

The Risks

The UK

PANIC Thousands ring emergency lines to report dead birds ... More than 1,000 carcasses across the country have been sent for testing ... Laboratories working round the clock to cope with the referrals.

REALITY CHECK Apart from the lone Fife swan, no carcasses have yet tested positive. Fourteen other dead birds from Scotland were yesterday given the all-clear, along with six from Northern Ireland.

The Poultry

PANIC 1,000sqm "risk" zone imposed in eastern Scotland ... More than 175 poultry farms affected ... Farmers told to keep hens under cover ... Poultrymen fear sales of chickens will plummet.

REALITY CHECK Humans have only minimal risk of catching bird flu. To contract the disease you would need to have lengthy contact with infected avian body fluids or droppings.

The Epicentre

PANIC On Tuesday bird flu found in chicken smuggled across the Chinese border ... Yesterday three farms near the border also reported infected animals ... Fears that H5N1 strain could develop resistance to vaccinations already given to poultry ... Bird flu has killed 42 people in Vietnam since late 2003.

REALITY CHECK No human cases in Vietnam have been reported since November 2005. $18.9m (£10.8m) was spent on vaccinating 120 million Vietnamese fowl last year, and 160 million more birds will be injected this year.

The Science

PANIC Pandemic could sweep the world ... Over 100m people could die, 750,000 in Britain ... No vaccine available ... But countries stocking drugs that might help.

REALITY CHECK Scientists expect a pandemic, but not yet ... The virus, most believe, still has to go through two mutations to enable it to become infectious between people.

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