CDC Says Too Late to Contain U.S. Swine Flu Outbreak

[CoM]

CDC Says Too Late to Contain U.S. Swine Flu Outbreak

 

Friday, April 24, 2009

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517815,00.html

 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday it was too late to contain the swine flu outbreak in the United States.

 

CDC acting director Dr. Richard Besser told reporters in a telephone briefing it was likely too late to try to contain the outbreak, by vaccinating, treating or isolating people.

 

"There are things that we see that suggest that containment is not very likely," he said.

 

He said the U.S. cases and Mexican cases are likely the same virus. "So far the genetic elements that we have looked at are the same."

 

But Besser said it was unclear why the virus was causing so many deaths in deaths in Mexico and such mild disease in the United States.

 

 

[westbrook]

swine flu!

 

1918

1976

1983

now!

 

http://archives.cbc.ca/health/disease/clips/12711/

[ScrubbieLady]

CDC Says Too Late to Contain U.S. Swine Flu Outbreak

 

Friday, April 24, 2009

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517815,00.html

 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday it was too late to contain the swine flu outbreak in the United States.

 

CDC acting director Dr. Richard Besser told reporters in a telephone briefing it was likely too late to try to contain the outbreak, by vaccinating, treating or isolating people.

 

"There are things that we see that suggest that containment is not very likely," he said.

 

He said the U.S. cases and Mexican cases are likely the same virus. "So far the genetic elements that we have looked at are the same."

 

But Besser said it was unclear why the virus was causing so many deaths in deaths in Mexico and such mild disease in the United States

 

So, there is nothig they can do to contain the outbreak so the solution is to do nothing? That is how he is talking.

 

I think that what is unclear about where people are dying from the disease should be one of the most important questions to answer. I read somewhere(probably in another thread), that only 20 of the deaths in Mexico were confirmed to be from the "swine" flu.

 

They are also saying that it is contains components of several strains of the flu. So, can that happen in nature?

[JCK88]

The plot thickens with the CDC....saw this headline on Drudge today in a Flashback dated 2004

<h1 class="headline">CDC to mix avian, human flu viruses in pandemic study>></h1> Robert Roos News Editor

 

 

Jan 14, 2004 (CIDRAP News) – One of the worst fears of infectious disease experts is that the H5N1 avian influenza virus now circulating in parts of Asia will combine with a human-adapted flu virus to create a deadly new flu virus that could spread around the world.

 

That could happen, scientists predict, if someone who is already infected with an ordinary flu virus contracts the avian virus at the same time. The avian virus has already caused at least 48 confirmed human illness cases in Asia, of which 35 have been fatal. The virus has shown little ability to spread from person to person, but the fear is that a hybrid could combine the killing power of the avian virus with the transmissibility of human flu viruses.

 

Now, rather than waiting to see if nature spawns such a hybrid, US scientists are planning to try to breed one themselves—in the name of preparedness.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon launch experiments designed to combine the H5N1 virus and human flu viruses and then see how the resulting hybrids affect animals. The goal is to assess the chances that such a "reassortant" virus will emerge and how dangerous it might be.

 

CDC officials confirmed the plans for the research as described recently in media reports, particularly in a Canadian Press (CP) story.

 

Two ways to make hybrids

The plans call for trying two methods to create hybrid viruses, CDC spokesman David Daigle told CIDRAP News via e-mail. One is to infect cells in a laboratory tissue culture with H5N1 and human flu viruses at the same time and then watch to see if they mix. For the human virus, investigators will use A (H3N2), the strain that has caused most human flu cases in recent years, according to the CP report.

 

The other method is reverse genetics—assembling a new virus with sets of genes from the H5N1 and H3N2 viruses. Reverse genetics has already been used to create H5N1 candidate vaccines in several laboratories, according to Daigle. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said recently it would soon launch a clinical trial of one of those vaccines.

 

Of the two methods, the co-infection approach was described as slower and more laborious, though closer to what happens in nature.

 

Any viable viruses that emerge from these processes will be seeded into animals that are considered good models for testing how flu viruses behave in humans, according to Daigle. The aim will be to observe whether the animals get sick and whether infected animals can infect others.

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been "pleading" for laboratories to do this research, because it could provide some evidence to back up the agency's warnings about the risk of a flu pandemic, according to the CP report.

 

Klaus Stohr, head of the WHO's global influenza program, was quoted as saying that if none of the hybrids caused disease, the agency might be inclined to dial down its level of concern. But if the experiments produce highly transmissible and pathogenic viruses, the agency will be more worried, he said.

 

Safety precautions

Because of the obvious risks in creating viruses with the potential to spark a pandemic, the work will be done in a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory at the CDC in Atlanta, Daigle told CIDRAP News.

 

"We recognize that there is concern by some over this type of work. This concern may be heightened by reports of recent lab exposures in other lab facilities," he said. "But CDC has an incredible record in lab safety and is taking very strict precautions."

 

Daigle said the US Department of Agriculture requires that highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses be treated as "Select Agents" and that research on them must be done in BSL-3 labs with "enhancements." These include "special provisions to protect both laboratory workers and the environment."

 

BSL-3 is the second highest level of laboratory biosecurity. It is used for work with pathogens that may cause serious or potentially lethal disease if inhaled, such as tuberculosis or St. Louis encephalitis, according to the CDC.

 

CDC experiments with HPAI viruses have to pass reviews by the agency's Institutional Biosafety Committee and Animal Care and Use Committee, Daigle said. The facilities involved are inspected by the USDA and the CDC's Office of Safety and Health, and staff members who work with Select Agents require special clearance.

 

It's been done before

The upcoming experiments will not break entirely new ground for the CDC, the CP story revealed. The agency already has made hybrid viruses with H5N1 samples isolated from patients in Hong Kong in 1997, when the virus first caused human disease.

 

The results of that research have not yet been published, and the CDC has said little about them. In the CP report, Dr. Nancy Cox, head of the CDC's influenza branch, commented only, "Some gene combinations could be produced and others could not."

 

Daigle added little to that. He said, "The reassortment work with the 1997 isolate was intermittently interrupted with SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] and then the 2004 H5N1 outbreak. We are currently concentrating our efforts on understanding the pathogenicity of the 2004 strains (non-reassortants) in mammalian models."

 

He said the CDC hopes to prepare a report on that research "in the near future."

 

See also:

 

CDC information on biosafety levels

http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/symp5/jyrtext.htm

 

 

Can find this at http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/i...404hybrids.html

[Cricket]

It thickens, indeed. Last week virus samples were discovered missing at Fort Detrick.

 

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/...m?StoryID=89293

 

 

Fort Detrick disease samples may be missing

 

Originally published April 22, 2009

By Justin M. Palk

News-Post Staff

 

Army criminal investigators are looking into the possibility that disease samples are missing from biolabs at Fort Detrick.As first reported in today's edition of The Frederick News-Post by columnist Katherine Heerbrandt, the investigators are from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division unit at Fort Meade.

 

Chad Jones, spokesman for Fort Meade, said CID is investigating the possibility of missing virus samples from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

 

He said the only other detail he could provide is that the investigation is ongoing.

 

Fort Detrick does not have its own CID office, Jones said, which is why Fort Meade's CID was brought in.

 

Jones said he could not comment on when the investigation started.

 

CID is responsible for investigating crimes where the Army is, or may be, a party of interest, according to the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command website.

 

USAMRIID is the Army's top biodefense lab, where researchers study pathogens including Ebola, anthrax and plague.

 

In February, USAMRIID halted all its research into these and other diseases, known as "select agents" following the discovery of virus samples that weren't listed in its inventory.

 

The institute's commander, Col. John Skvorak, ordered research halted while workers conducted a complete inventory of the institute's select agents.

 

That inventory is nearly completed, though the exact end date isn't known yet, said Caree Vander Linden, USAMRIID spokeswoman.

 

Vander Linden said she didn't know about the CID investigation and referred questions to the CID's head public affairs office.

 

There is no indication whether the CID investigation is connected to USAMRIID's re-inventorying of its select agent stocks.

[JCK88]

Cricket, I've been following that story. The samples missing aren't avian, swine or human flu. This snippet appeared in the Manchester Union Leader the other day...not exactly reassuring, though:

 

>>Vials of a potentially harmful pathogen have gone missing at Fort Detrick, the Army's main biodefense lab. But don't freak out. The samples of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (VEE) virus are relatively small. The Army has found no evidence yet of criminal misconduct, the Washington Post reports. And the virus usually causes only mild flulike illness although brain inflammation and death are possible, too.

 

It has potential for use as a biological weapon but is far less lethal than some other agents the lab works with.>>

 

Other news articles have said the missing viruses from Fort Detrick may not be missing ...may have been destroyed but not recorded properly as such. (Which makes one wonder if this is a cover story to calm to people down or what...)