India bird flu tests clear 11 as EU fears grow

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Indian authorities on Thursday cleared
11 out of 12 people quarantined following an H5N1 outbreak in
chickens, while the virus appeared to have infected a farm bird
in the European Union for the first time.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu, which can kill humans, took a
hold on new countries, with Slovakia saying initial tests had
showed it in a wild falcon and a grebe. Scientists in Australia
said it would not be surprising if it had arrived on its
shores.

The rapid spread of the virus from Asia into the Middle
East, Africa and Europe has heightened fears of a human
pandemic and triggered sharp falls in poultry sales.

In India, where hundreds of millions of people live in
rural areas side-by-side with livestock and domestic fowl, the
risk of human infection — which comes from direct contact with
an infected bird — is deemed higher than in other countries.

So far there have been no human cases in India, but
authorities were carrying out tests on a dozen people
quarantined with suspected bird flu in Navapur, a remote town
in India’s western Maharashtra state.

Eleven of the 12 had tested negative but the last sample
was undergoing further tests.

Authorities had virtually sealed off Navapur, placing
restrictions on trains and road traffic passing through.

“We want to minimize contact between the local people and
outsiders. We are telling road travelers to use masks and get
on with their journeys without stopping,” Maharashtra’s health
director, T.P. Doke, told Reuters from Navapur.

“Trains are not stopping here … It’s a kind of sealing.”

There have been no cases of human-to-human transmissions of
the virus, but experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a form where
this is possible, causing a pandemic that could kill millions.

It has killed more than 90 people in seven countries since
2003.

FARM BIRD INFECTED?

In Europe, the most immediate concerns are of the virus
hitting domestic poultry. Mass culling would devastate the EU’s
20 billion euro ($23.8 billion) poultry and egg industry.

Poultry producers in France have estimated a 30 percent
fall in sales due to bird flu has cost them 130 million euros
($154.7 million) since November, farm minister Dominique
Bussereau said.

The possible appearance of H5N1 in a farm bird in Germany,
indicated by initial tests, marks a new threat. Other EU cases
have been in wild birds only, mostly migratory swans.

Final test results from the duck on a farm on the Baltic
Sea island of Ruegen — where Germany’s first H5N1 cases were
detected last week — were expected later in the day.

Other animals on the farm were now being slaughtered as a
preventive measure.

Neighboring France confirmed late on Wednesday a second
wild duck on its territory had H5N1.

Countries have implemented measures such as protection and
surveillance zones to try and halt the spread of the virus.

But it is difficult to stop birds from migrating and
Australian scientists said they feared birds from nearby
Indonesia are most likely to have brought the virus to the
north of the country, although it is yet to be detected.

“There is no magic curtain between Indonesia and Australia,
and given the expanse of our land it would not be surprising if
it was here,” said Professor Mark von Itzstein from Griffith
University in the state of Queensland.

Despite its spread around the world, researchers were
taking some heart from the fact that H5N1 has remained
relatively dormant in Thailand and Vietnam, a region many
thought would be the epicenter of a possible human pandemic.

Officials said vaccination and well-organized grass-roots
monitoring networks were the reason for bird flu’s unexpected
failure to spread during the countries’ recent “cold season,”
which in previous years is when it seemed to thrive.

(Reporting by Kamil Zaheer in New Delhi, Michael Perry in
Sydney, Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Paule Bonjean in Paris)