Bird flu vaccine may be too late for pandemic: expert

By Phil Stewart

ROME (Reuters) – Drug companies may not be able to produce
enough bird flu vaccine in time to combat a human pandemic, a
top United Nations official said on Tuesday as governments
scrambled to contain the deadly virus.

It could take six months to manufacture adequate vaccine
stocks, and current stockpiles may be useless because the flu
virus has mutated, said David Nabarro, U.N. coordinator for
global readiness against an outbreak.

He said “very high priority” efforts were under way to
raise manufacturing capacity so that a vaccine could be
produced more quickly once a virus emerged that could cause a
pandemic.

Experts say the virus is mutating steadily and there are
fears that if it takes a form which spreads quickly among
humans it could kill millions.

“We do not know what the genetic makeup of the eventual
mutant virus will be, therefore we cannot be sure that existing
vaccines that have been stored up will be effective,” Nabarro
said.

Outbreaks of bird flu at the weekend in Romania and Turkey
triggered fears that the highly contagious disease could
advance into Europe.

Experts there have not yet determined whether the cases are
from the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, which has killed
millions of birds and 65 people in Asia since 2003. Officials
have played down the likelihood.

Romanian authorities said on Tuesday they had found no new
cases of avian flu but would continue culling poultry in the
Danube delta near the Black Sea to prevent the disease from
spreading.

SUSPECT CASES

Three ducks which tested positive for bird flu on Friday
remain the only birds in which disease antibodies have been
detected. But Romanian officials said testing of suspect cases
would go on with the help of European Union experts.

“There was no other positive case,” Agriculture Ministry
spokesman Adrian Tibu said.

He said EU experts were helping local scientists isolate
the virus and would send samples to Britain to discover whether
they are dealing with the H5N1 strain.

Results of British laboratory tests are expected by the end
of the week.

Turkey warned that it faced a high risk of further
outbreaks of avian flu as it lies in the path of many species
of migrating birds, which can carry the virus long distances.

The 25-nation European Union, along with a number of other
countries, banned imports of birds from Turkey on Monday.

The French Agriculture Ministry called for a meeting of
experts in Brussels on Wednesday to step up surveillance of
migratory birds and on ways of protecting farm-raised poultry.

And Paris said on Tuesday it wanted EU health and foreign
ministers to meet soon to coordinate their reaction to the
spreading bird flu virus.

“We can see that the H5N1 virus, this bird flu virus, is
spreading and is arriving at our doors,” French Foreign
Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on France 2 television.

A European Commission spokesman said EU health ministers
would meet informally on October 20-21.

In Bulgaria, authorities said they were testing three birds
found dead in the north of the country but so far there were no
indications the virus had crossed its borders. Test results
were expected in about a week.

Egypt banned imports of live birds and tightened up
quarantine controls at airports. It also canceled the annual
bird-hunting season to minimize contacts between hunters and
the migrant birds they shoot.

The United Arab Emirates banned imports of live birds and
feathers from Turkey and Romania, and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf
region’s biggest economy, said it had prepared an emergency
plan to ban imports from any country where an outbreak of bird
flu had been confirmed.