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bleucheese
Veejay
Veejay

Joined: Aug 01, 2003
Posts: 1993
Location: this side of the tracks

Posted: Oct 23, 2005 - 08:01 PM
Post subject: NO ONE'S LEAVING!

Any Jane's Addiction fans?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/22/AR2005 102200302_pf.html

China to shut borders if bird flu mutates: paper

By Susan Fenton
Reuters
Saturday, October 22, 2005; 4:48 PM

HONG KONG (Reuters) - China will close its borders if it finds a single case of human-to-human transmission of bird flu there, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Saturday, while a defiant Taiwan said it would copy a patented antiviral drug.

Saving lives would be Beijing's top priority in efforts to contain a possible outbreak of bird flu, even if it meant slowing the economy, Huang Jiefu, a vice minister of health, was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.

The World Bank said while prevention measures would cost a lot, the economic damage from a pandemic would be far worse.

Huang told health officials from China, Hong Kong and Macau on Friday that any suspected human case would be quarantined.

The World Health Organization has said the deadly H5N1 strain is endemic in poultry in China and across much of Asia, and it may only be a matter of time before it develops the ability to pass easily from human to human.

China's sheer size and its attempts to conceal the SARS epidemic in 2003 have prompted fears among some experts that it has had more bird flu cases than officially recorded.

Since breaking out in late 2003 in South Korea, the deadly H5N1 strain of influenza has killed more than 60 people in four Asian countries and reached as far west as European Russia, Turkey and Romania, tracking the paths of migratory birds.

Russian authorities said they had uncovered more cases of bird flu in the Urals and were investigating a suspected outbreak in the Altai region close to the Kazakh border.

NEW CASES

Sweden's National Veterinary Institute said on Saturday a duck found dead east of the capital tested positive for avian flu but that it was too early to say which strain of virus the bird had.

"The result of the virus tests which were carried out today on samples from ducks found in Eskilstuna show that one of them was infected with influenza," the institute said in a statement.

The institute is carrying out additional tests and the results on whether the virus of the H5 type were due on Sunday.

On Friday, new cases were reported in Britain, Romania and Croatia, but there was no immediate indication it was H5N1.

Croatian authorities started culling on Saturday all poultry around a fish pond where the country's first bird flu case was confirmed and police sealed off the area.

The officials said 10,000 birds in about 1,000 rural households will be killed in the next few days.

Samples were sent to Britain to determine if it was H5N1 which has been found in Romania, which shares the Danube waterway with Croatia, and in Turkey.

Bosnia banned the import of poultry from neighboring Croatia and also forbade the transport of wild fowl and poultry and the slaughter and sale of poultry in outdoor markets.

Italy said it was banning imports of live poultry of any species and all related products from Croatia, Romania and other Balkan countries.

Slovenia, also a neighbor of Croatia, prohibited outdoor poultry breeding in one part of the country in line with the EU regulations, the Slovenian Veterinary Administration said.

In Britain, the Agriculture Ministry said a parrot that died in quarantine had contracted bird flu. The parrot had been imported from Surinam and held with other birds from Taiwan.

Because of the British case, Germany said it would ask the European Union next week to ban all wild bird imports.

TAIWAN TALKS TOUGH

Amid growing fears about the spread of the disease, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche AG has come under pressure to pump up output of its antiviral avian flu drug Tamiflu.

The company agreed on Thursday to meet four generic drug makers with a view to possible tie-ups.

But an impatient Taiwan said -- patent or not -- it was ready to start making its own version of Tamiflu.

"We have tried our best to negotiate with Roche. It means we have shown our goodwill to Roche and we appreciate their patent. But to protect our people is the utmost important thing," Su Ih-jen, head of the clinical division at the National Health Research Institute, told Reuters.

The research institute showed media a generic version of Tamiflu produced by its laboratories, which it said was 99 percent similar to Roche's drug.

Taiwan has so far been spared a serious outbreak of H5N1 but authorities found rare birds infected with the strain in a container smuggled from China on Thursday, the island's first case since late 2003.

Experts say Tamiflu, generically known as oseltamivir, cannot be regarded as a "cure-all" for H5N1 as it must be administered in the early stages of infection -- and will in some cases not work due to anti-viral resistance.

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Got to love those industrious Taiwanese. Money money money muhhhhney. MONEY!