CDC Issues Advisory To Help Doctors Identify Bird Flu

[HuffingtonPost]

* U.S. has not issued any travel advisories                

* No bird flu has been found in the United States     (Adds details from news conference, facts about bird flu)                

By Julie Steenhuysen                

CHICAGO, April 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease  Control and Prevention said on Friday it has issued an advisory  to U.S. doctors that may help them identify any cases of the new  bird flu virus known as H7N9, but stressed that no cases have  been found in the United States.                

So far, the new strain of bird flu that has infected 16  people in China and killed six has not been shown to be capable  of transmission from person to person, CDC's Dr. Thomas Frieden  told reporters on a teleconference.                

All of the 16 confirmed cases appear to be isolated, with no  links between the flu strains that would suggest they were being  passed from person to person, Frieden said.                

However, two of the 16 had family members who were ill, and  Chinese health authorities are assessing those cases to see if  there was transmission within the family.                

Frieden said the CDC has not issued any formal travel  advisories and that there are no steps U.S. citizens need to be  taking to protect themselves, though the CDC is putting doctors  on alert.                

"Today, we issued a health advisory to inform clinicians and  public health specialists throughout the U.S. of what is  happening and what they should do if they have a suspected case  in a traveler who is returning from China in terms of testing,  infection control and care," he said.                

Frieden said the CDC has developed a test that could be used  to screen severely ill travelers returning from China for the  new bird flu strain, and he said the United States is developing  diagnostic test kits that it will distribute to China and other  countries to ensure rapid diagnosis of this strain of flu.                

Such kits could help contain the spread of the virus if it  does learn to easily pass from person to person.                

With flu, Frieden said there are two factors that are  important: how virulent the strain is and how readily does it  spread among people.                

Health authorities won't know the answers to those questions  until they are able to test many more people beyond the initial  16 confirmed cases.                

"It could be that hundreds of other people had very mild  infections and these (16) people were kind of the tip of the  iceberg," Frieden said.                

Or, he said, it could be a very rare event that passes from  animals to people that causes severe illness in the unlucky few  who become infected.                

Until that becomes clear, the CDC said it will continue  working with vaccine makers to develop a candidate virus that  could be used to make a vaccine if one should be needed.                

Because of recent advances in U.S. vaccine manufacturing  capabilities, including the recent approval of Novartis'  cell-based flu manufacturing plant in Holly Springs, North  Carolina, Frieden said development of a bird flu vaccine should  not disrupt the U.S. supply of seasonal flu vaccine.                

The first cases of this new strain of bird flu, officially  called avian influenza A (H7N9) viruses, were reported by the  World Health Organization on April 1.                

Type A flu viruses occur naturally among wild birds and can  infect domestic poultry and other bird and animal species, but  they rarely infect humans and have typically occurred when  people have had close contact with poultry, as with the recent  H5N1 bird flu outbreak.                

According to the CDC, this is the first time H7N9 has  infected people. Frieden said most of those who have become sick  had direct contact with live poultry. Chinese health authorities  are investigating the source of the infections. Frieden said  they have reported positive cultures for a similar strain in  both chickens and pigeons, and more testing is going on.                

Because this is a non-human virus, the worry is that it  could cause a flu pandemic if it learned to become easily spread  from person to person.                

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Vicki Allen and  Philip Barbara)

Via: HuffingtonPost