BEIJING/KUALA LUMPUR, 21 August 2004 — The discovery of a deadly bird flu strain in Malaysia after cases elsewhere in Southeast Asia signaled a major winter outbreak was likely, international health experts said yesterday. Since a strain deadly to humans emerged in Asia several months ago, scientists have voiced fears the flu could mutate, become able to jump to humans, and spread.
Adding to concern was an announcement by a Chinese scientist yesterday that pigs in China had been found infected with bird flu, but the World Health Organization said that did not come as a complete surprise.
A strain of bird flu blamed for 27 deaths in Asia this year has been found in Malaysia this week and hundreds of birds have been gassed this week and their carcasses burned to contain the outbreak. The latest deaths from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza were of three people in Vietnam earlier this month.
“This is a great concern. It says to me that the virus is endemic in the region,” virologist Dr. Robert Webster of St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, told a Beijing symposium. China had found pigs infected for the first time with bird flu in 2002 and 2003, Chen Hualan, a member of the China Academy of Agriculture, told an conference on avian flu and SARS. “This is a somewhat dangerous signal for public health,” she said.
WHO representative Henk Bekedam told Reuters: “We know that pigs can carry human virus as well as bird flu virus. We need a lot more information before we can make comments on that... We also know that the virus so far has been very ineffective in being easily transmitted to humans, let alone between humans.”
The fear is that human and bird flu virus could mix in pigs and form a strain more easily transmittable to humans. The outbreak in Malaysia was the country’s first and no human cases have been confirmed. But three people suffering from cold symptoms have been admitted to hospital and put in quarantine. Two of them, a teenage girl and her mother, are from the village at the centre of the outbreak while the third is a veterinary worker who reached the area two days ago. All three are being tested for bird flu.
Malaysia’s poultry industry faces huge losses as export markets close and livestock prices fall. And restaurants specializing in chicken dishes in the capital Kuala Lumpur had noticeably fewer customers yesterday. “Usually we are jam-packed on Friday and Saturday because the food is good,” said Raul, a waiter at Mediterranean grilled chicken outlet Nando’s. “But today, it is down. Maybe 10 to 20 percent less customers.”
A total of 15 outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian flu have been reported since 1950, five of them big, said Dr. Klaus Stohr of the Department of Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response under the WHO Global Influenza Program.