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New bird flu expected to spread in Europe: WHO

A new kind of bird flu hitting European poultry farms will surely continue to spread among birds, the Geneva-based World Health Organization said on Tuesday, urging countries to be "vigilant".

New bird flu expected to spread in Europe: WHO
Ducks at breeding farm in Yorkshire, England where bird flu has been identified. Photo: Oli Scarff/AFP

Whether the virus will spread to humans remains unclear, the UN health agency said.

"We should all be quite vigilant," Elizabeth Mumford, a scientist with the WHO's Global Influenza Programme, told reporters in Geneva.

Responding to questions, she said she "absolutely" expected more bird flocks getting sick.

She underlined the importance of culling sick birds and monitoring fever in humans who have been in contact with sick birds to ensure any possible human infections are spotted.

Germany and the Netherlands have been confirmed to be dealing with the same subtype of a highly infectious strain of bird flu, called H5N8, which appears to be similar to a virus that has been infecting birds in China, Japan and South Korea since the beginning of the year, she said.

Britain has also been hit with "a highly pathogenic H5 outbreak also in poultry," Mumford said.

It was not yet confirmed, though, that it was the same H5N8 strain.

"It could be something else," she said.

Renowned virologist and bird flu expert Ron Fouchier however told AFP on Monday that British authorities had told European authorities that their virus was the same H5N8 strain as found in Germany earlier this month and now in the Netherlands.

An EU source told reporters that it is "most likely the same strain in all three places".

Some 150,000 hens at an egg farm near Utrecht in the Netherlands were set to be culled, while 6,000 ducks on a Yorkshire farm in Britain were also to be put down, authorities said.

WHO said the virus had most likely moved from Asia to Europe with migratory wild birds. Several hundred thousand birds, mainly ducks, have been culled over the last two months because of a South Korean outbreak.

Individual human cases likely

So far, no cases of human infection have been detected, either in Asia or in Europe, Mumford said.

She acknowledged though that "influenza viruses are very unpredictable, and it's very difficult to tell what a new virus will do".

"I must say that we really know very little about this virus, and until we get some experience with it, it's a bit wide open," she said.

Since H5N8 seems to be spreading quickly among poultry, she told AFP she "we will probably see some human cases".

But while some people may be infected by sick birds, she said so far it appeared unlikely that the virus would begin spreading between humans.

The H5 component of the virus appeared similar to that found in the H5N1 strain of bird flu that has killed more than 400 people, mainly in Southeast Asia, since first appearing in 2003, Mumford said.

But the N-component was from a completely different virus with no human component, indicating it really prefers to attach to birds, she said.

The fact that no human cases have surfaced in Asia, where the virus has been circulating for some time, with authorities closely monitoring the situation, "is encouraging", Mumford said.

Another positive fact, she said, was that in lab tests the virus responded to anti-virus drug Tamiflu, meaning if it did jump to humans, the medical community should have a tool to fight it.

In the meantime, WHO is urging people in Europe to avoid touching sick or dead wild birds.

People involved in culling the sick poultry should monitor themselves for fever for two weeks after coming into contact with the birds, Mumford said.

For consumers, she said that "poultry meat safely prepared and well-cooked is completely safe." 

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ANGELA MERKEL

WHO to set up pandemic data hub in Berlin

The World Health Organization announced Wednesday it would set up a global data hub in Berlin to analyse information on emerging pandemic threats, filling the gaps exposed by Covid-19.

WHO to set up pandemic data hub in Berlin
Angela Merkel on May 5th. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/AFP Pool | John Macdougall

The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, which will start operating later this year, is set to analyse data quickly and in detail, in order to predict, prevent, detect, prepare for and respond to risks worldwide.

The hub will try to get ahead of the game, looking for pre-signals that go far beyond current systems that monitor publicly available information for signs of emerging outbreaks.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed gaps in the global systems for pandemic and epidemic intelligence,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists.

“There will be more viruses that will emerge with the potential for sparking epidemics or pandemics.

“Viruses move fast. But data can move even faster. With the right information, countries and communities can stay one step ahead of an emerging risk and save lives.”

READ ALSO: ‘We are still in the third wave’: German Health Minister urges caution in reopening after shutdown

Merging digital, health expertise

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin was a good location for the hub as it already had leading players in the digital and health fields, such as the Robert Koch Institute.

“If that expertise is now supplemented by the WHO Hub, we will create a unique environment for pandemic and health research here in Berlin – an environment from which important action-oriented insights will emerge for governments and leaders around the world,” she said in a video message.

It is hoped that the site will be operational from September. Its budget is still under discussion, while Germany will meet the start-up costs.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said the world needed the capacity to detect outbreaks with the potential to become health crises “before the threat becomes a sad reality”.

Global systems were currently “insufficiently prepared” to handle the risks posed by outbreaks, mutations of existing pathogens, extensions of diseases to previously unaffected populations, and diseases jumping species from animals to humans, he added.

“There’s a clear need for a stronger global early warning alert and emergency response system with improved public health intelligence,” he said.

“Better data and better analytics are key for better decisions.”

 Looking for pre-signals

“There are signals that may occur before epidemics happen… data that can give us pre-signals,” said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan. That information could drive early decision-making, he added.

“The Hub will allow us to develop tools for that sort of predictive analytics,” he said.

A joint mission by international and Chinese scientists concluded in March that the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19 disease most likely passed to humans from a bat via an intermediary animal.

The experts’ report suggested the outbreak could have started as far back as September 2019, long before it was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan.

The WHO only became aware of the new coronavirus on December 31st that year, when its epidemic intelligence service and its China office spotted a media report and a mention by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission of a mysterious cluster of pneumonia cases.

The Covid-19 pandemic has killed at least 3.2 million people and more than 154 million cases have been registered worldwide since then, according to tallies from official sources compiled by AFP.

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