ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending October 23rd, 2005

The Pentagon is looking at the possibility of using federal troops to enforce a quarantine in the event of an outbreak of pandemic bird flu in the United States, a senior official said on Wednesday.

President George W. Bush said last week he would consider using the military to "effect a quarantine" in response to any outbreak of avian influenza, but provided few details.

Bush at the time also suggested he might place National Guard troops, normally commanded by state governors, under federal control as part of the government's response to the "catastrophe" of such a flu pandemic.

Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said quarantine law historically has been under the primary jurisdiction of states, not the federal government.

"And my expectation is that any quarantine measures that would be put in place would likely involve a substantial employment of the National Guard, probably under command and control of the governor of an affected state," McHale told a group of reporters.

"However, we are looking at a wide range of contingencies, potentially involving Title 10 forces (federal troops) if a pandemic outbreak of a biological threat were to occur ...

EU states have been urged to stockpile anti-viral drugs after confirmation that the bird flu virus found in Turkey is the H5N1 strain dangerous to humans. The European Union should be ready for a potential flu pandemic, said Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou.

The warning came after tests on dead birds in north-west Turkey confirmed the H5N1 strain. An outbreak in Romania is assumed to be the same, the EU said.

The H5N1 strain has killed more than 60 people in South East Asia since 2003.

However, of those only one is suspected to have died after catching the virus from another human.

It is a highly pathogenic and aggressive virus and we in the European Union have to deal with that

Those who have been in the presence of dead or dying birds are most likely to become infected, and the chances of human-to-human transmission are still seen as very slim.

Speaking at a news conference, Mr Kyprianou advised seasonal flu vaccination for populations considered to be at risk and said governments should focus on stockpiling anti-viral drugs.

"What is important is that it does become a priority for all member states and that they make an investment for preparing for this event," he said.

Standard flu vaccines, normally given to young children, the elderly and sick, are unlikely to protect against bird flu...

A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history. A draft of the final plan, which has been years in the making and is expected to be released later this month, says a large outbreak that began in Asia would be likely, because of modern travel patterns, to reach the United States within "a few months or even weeks."

If such an outbreak occurred, hospitals would become overwhelmed, riots would engulf vaccination clinics, and even power and food would be in short supply, according to the plan, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The 381-page plan calls for quarantine and travel restrictions but concedes that such measures "are unlikely to delay introduction of pandemic disease into the U.S. by more than a month or two."

The plan's 10 supplements suggest specific ways that local and state governments should prepare now for an eventual pandemic by, for instance, drafting legal documents that would justify quarantines. Written by health officials, the plan does not yet address responses by the military or other governmental departments.

The plan outlines a worst-case scenario in which more than 1.9 million Americans would die and 8.5 million would be hospitalized with costs exceeding $450 billion.

It also calls for a domestic vaccine production capacity of 600 million doses within six months, more than 10 times the present capacity.

On Friday, President Bush invited the leaders of the nation's top six vaccine producers to the White House to cajole them into increasing their domestic vaccine capacity, and the flu plan demonstrates just how monumental a task these companies have before them.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration's efforts to plan for a possible pandemic flu have become controversial, with many Democrats in Congress charging that the administration has not done enough. Many have pointed to the lengthy writing process of the flu plan as evidence of this.

But while the administration's flu plan, officially called the Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan, closely outlines how the Health and Human Services Department may react during a pandemic, it skirts many essential decisions, like how the military may be deployed...

America's top health official says the world is "woefully unprepared" to respond to a pandemic, a problem made more urgent by concerns that the current avian flu virus could spread into a global health crisis.

"The world is woefully unprepared," Mike Leavitt, the U.S. secretary of health and human services, told CNN Thursday.

"You'd think that it would be a matter of constant concern to us. It has not been, anywhere in the world and, consequently, the world is unprepared. And we're now as a civilization rallying to say, 'What can we do to better prepare?'"

Leavitt made his comments as health experts from around the world gathered in Washington to discuss the possibility of a flu pandemic.

The two-day conference is bringing together representatives of more than 80 countries and international organizations about preventing the spread of the avian flu virus.

Leavitt, who is hosting the event along with U.S. Global Affairs Undersecretary Paula Dobriansky, said officials were trying to devise a comprehensive surveillance plan so that the virus could be monitored ..

Two teams of federal and university scientists announced today that they had resurrected the 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history's most deadly epidemics, and had found that unlike the viruses that caused more recent flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the 1918 virus was actually a bird flu that jumped directly to humans.

The work, being published in the journals Nature and Science, involved getting the complete genetic sequence of the 1918 virus, using techniques of molecular biology to synthesize it, and then using it to infect mice and human lung cells in a specially equipped, secure lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The findings, the scientists say, reveal a small number of genetic changes that may explain why the virus was so lethal. The work also confirms the legitimacy of worries about the bird flu viruses that are now emerging in Asia.

The new studies find that today's bird flu viruses share some of the crucial genetic changes that occurred in the 1918 flu. The scientists suspect that with the 1918 flu, changes in just 25 to 30 out of about 4,400 amino acids in the viral proteins turned the virus into a killer. The bird flus, known as H5N1 viruses, have a few, but not all of those changes.

In a joint statement, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said, "The new studies could have an immediate impact by helping scientist focus on detecting changes in the evolving H5N1 virus that might make widespread transmission among humans more likely."

The work also reveals that the 1918 virus is very different from ordinary human flu viruses...