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There were a couple of bird flu reports out of China last week that may indicate a problem with the H5N1 strain in that country. The first report on HSDailyWire.com reported 8 instances of human infections with the bird flu but without exposure to any apparently infected birds. The second report on Bloomberg.com subsequently reported some birds infected with H5N1 in one of the areas with an earlier reported human infection. There could be a couple of different things going on. All of the more obvious things would be significant cause for concern.

Human to Human Infection

The most worrisome possibility is that there has been significant human-to-human transmission of H5N1 that has allowed the spread of the disease outside of the bird transmission route. This would mean that there has been additional evolution of this strain and it is getting closer to becoming a pandemic capable strain. To become pandemic capable it would have to become easily transmissible from human-to-human, probably through the air (from coughing or sneezing) rather than physical contact or direct exchange of bodily fluids.

There are no indications that these eight individuals in five widely separated areas of rural China had any common personal contacts. What is not clear is where they received their infections from, though birds have been officially ruled out. It appears that it is too soon to declare this a pre-pandemic strain of H5N1.

Antibiotic Affects

The Chinese government is apparently quite proud of their prophylactic use of antibiotics to prevent the spread of bird flu. They have been extensively inoculating their flocks to prevent them from becoming infected. What could be happening is that the disease is being maintained in a pre-clinical stage where it is not obvious that the birds have become sick.

This would allow transmission to humans that have not received the prophylactic antibiotics without the apparent infection of local birds. What this means is that the Chinese have little indication of how wide spread the infection in within their flocks is and they may be breeding an antibiotic resistant strain of H5N1. It would also mean that people would not be taking standard precautions to prevent personal infections from the infected birds. This could result in a larger than normal pool of people to act as incubators for the virus.

Poor Reporting of In-flock Infections

What is more likely is that farmers and agricultural specialists are not promptly reporting the infections of their flocks. The automatic culling of flocks with infected birds is a well established policy in China. This provides farmers with an incentive to be slow to report infected flocks. Even with the government compensating the farmers for lost birds, the farmers would be better off selling their non-sick birds in the market place.

This problem is further aggravated by the increasing levels of mistrust that farmers have for the central government. The wide spread corruption of mid-level bureaucrats has done little to enhance the respect of the rural populace for the government.

Keep an Eye on Chinese Developments

All of this means that the world medical community should keep a close eye on bird flu developments in China. The governments of Indonesia and Vietnam are being much more open with their reporting of bird flu outbreaks. It currently looks like the wide spread of the disease in those two countries makes them the most likely source of pandemic bird flu. If the Chinese infection rates are higher than they seem, the wider international travel through China could provide for a faster spread of a pandemic strain.our article here

Learn more about this author, Patrick Coyle.
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