Dogs and Pigs Test Positive In China For Swine Flu 11/30/09 6:22am

Dogs and Pigs Test Positive In China For Swine Flu

Article:

BEIJING, Nov. 30 -- Health experts in China have assured pet-lovers they need not panic following the discovery of two dogs infected with the deadly H1N1 flu at the weekend.

The animals were diagnosed in Beijing and, while it is possible for pets to transfer viruses to their owners, scientists said there is no evidence to suggest pets are already spreading the illness.

"If animals can get infected from humans, then the reverse is also true," said Feng Zijian, director of emergency response for the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

"But there is no need to panic in this case."

He explained that so far, across the world, the virus has only been passed from humans to pets.

However, if the virus spreads among dogs, it could potentially be passed on when the animal sneezes or through its waste.

"Only when the virus mutates within dogs will it be a new threat to humans," Feng said.

The virus found in dogs in Beijing was a 99-percent match for the flu currently infecting humans, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, which announced the canine infection on Saturday but did not elaborate on the breed.

"The role of dogs in the virus

Health experts in China have assured pet-lovers they need not panic following the discovery of two dogs infected with the deadly H1N1 flu at the weekend.

The animals were diagnosed in Beijing and, while it is possible for pets to transfer viruses to their owners, scientists said there is no evidence to suggest pets are already spreading the illness.

"If animals can get infected from humans, then the reverse is also true," said Feng Zijian, director of emergency response for the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

"But there is no need to panic in this case."

He explained that so far, across the world, the virus has only been passed from humans to pets.

However, if the virus spreads among dogs, it could potentially be passed on when the animal sneezes or through its waste.

"Only when the virus mutates within dogs will it be a new threat to humans," Feng said.

The virus found in dogs in Beijing was a 99-percent match for the flu currently infecting humans, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, which announced the canine infection on Saturday but did not elaborate on the breed.

"The role of dogs in the virus' mutation is still unknown. However, pigs provide a better environment for virus mutation," Feng said.

"Pigs are regarded as the gene mixer."

The canines, which were probably infected by their owners, are contagious to other dogs, an expert at the Beijing Agricultural Bureau told Beijing Times on Saturday.

On Nov 19, four pork samples tested positive for H1N1 at a slaughterhouse in Shuangcheng, Heilongjiang province. The animals were also infected by humans, according to reports.

Meanwhile, as China rushes to vaccinate people against the flu, the H1N1 virus is picking up speed.

Eight infected children are in critical condition at a hospital in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. Two of them, aged 9 and 11, have been diagnosed as brain dead.

"I believe the H1N1 virus led to white matter lesions in the children," said Li Chengrong, president of Shenzhen Children's Hospital, who added that the illness attacks the nervous system and can cause dementia, coma and even death.

He said parents should pay close attention to a child's mental state if they become ill.

Symptoms include delays in responding, incoherence in speech, restlessness and insomnia.

"Once a child starts to convulse or goes into a coma, it's too late," Li said.' mutation is still unknown. However, pigs provide a better environment for virus mutation," Feng said.

"Pigs are regarded as the gene mixer."

The canines, which were probably infected by their owners, are contagious to other dogs, an expert at the Beijing Agricultural Bureau told Beijing Times on Saturday.

On Nov 19, four pork samples tested positive for H1N1 at a slaughterhouse in Shuangcheng, Heilongjiang province. The animals were also infected by humans, according to reports.

WHO Says Pork is Safe To Eat, Despite Now Being Infected with H1N1 Virus 11/24/09 9:40am

WHO Says Pork is Safe To Eat, Despite Now Being Infected with H1N1 Virus

Article:


Health experts have assured consumers that Chinese pork is still safe despite reports of pigs being infected with the deadly A/H1N1 flu.

Swine at a slaughterhouse in Heilongjiang province tested positive for the virus last Thursday, the Ministry of Agriculture revealed over the weekend.

Four positive samples were discovered at the abattoir in Shuangcheng by a local flu laboratory, China News Service quoted a ministry statement as saying.

Officials suggested the cause of infection could have been the animals' close contact with humans during transportation.

Gene sequence analysis showed the virus suffered by the pigs is a 99-percent match with the human H1N1 strain. No mutation was found, the government statement said.

It is the first such infection in China, although there have already been reports in 13 other countries and regions, Beijing Times reported yesterday.

However, experts with the World Health Organization (WHO) insisted well-prepared pork is still safe to eat because the virus cannot survive temperatures of 70 C and above.

China consumed more than 46 million tons of pork last year, around half of the world's total.

Since the outbreak of H1N1 in April, prevention and monitoring of swine has been a priority for the government. The virus was originally known as "swine flu" before it was renamed to dispel any links with pigs.

The information office of the Ministry of Agriculture was unable to comment yesterday, but in a statement last week officials said authorities across China had checked about 87 million pigs, but no influenza virus had been detected.

Meanwhile, four patients in North Carolina in the United States tested positive over the weekend for a new H1N1 strain that is resistant to oseltamivir, or Tamiflu, AP reported.

Tamiflu is one of two flu medicines being used in the fight against H1N1 and health officials have been watching for signs of the virus mutating, making the drugs ineffective.

More than 50 resistant cases have been reported since April, including 21 in the US. Almost all in the US were isolated, officials with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

London-based BBC reported five Tamiflu-resistant cases in Wales last week.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health also said it had detected mutations in three positive samples. The viruses were isolated from the country's first two fatal cases and one other patient.

Norwegian scientists have analyzed samples from more than 70 patients, but only in three have mutations been detected. This suggests the mutation is not widespread, say scientists.

Laboratories in Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Ukraine and the US have all detected similar mutations, with the earliest being in April.

Although information is incomplete, the mutations were detected in fatal, as well as mild cases. Experts said the significance of the finding is unclear.

As of Friday, the virus had killed 6,770 people worldwide since April, with 520 deaths in the past week, according to figures released by the WHO yesterday.

So, should we just blindly believe the WHO in that the pork is safe?

One *side note* - please know, there is a Web bot prediction that goes with this "bleeding lungs" and "Ill Winds" correct prediction - it says meat will become infected and (I don't want to say how many are suppose to die at this point - because it is inconceivable) people will eat the infected meat before it is realized (hidden?) that is causing the deaths around the world. After that, no one will be able to eat meat again, we will basically be on a vegetarian diet.

Two Die in China from Vaccine, Besides Side Effects Happening 11/21/09 4:35

Two Die in China from Vaccine, Besides Side Effects Happening

Oh my, how can this article be correct? The WHO has come out over and over again, saying the Vaccine is not linked to any deaths nor side effects! Wow, those people that die or have some terrible side effects, must have just coincidentally gotten a vaccine, right before they were going to have something go wrong. Yeah, WHO is the organization to believe, right?


Article:

Two persons are reported to have died after taking the A/H1N1 vaccination as the Chinese mainland prepares to vaccinate 65 million people, or 5 percent of its population, by the end of the year, health officials said on Friday.

A secondary school teacher in Hunan province died while playing basketball 8 hours after taking the jab, the provincial health department said on Friday afternoon.

But his death, according to preliminary findings, was not linked to the vaccine and it would not affect the ongoing H1N1 vaccination program, said Deng Haihua, spokesman for the Ministry of Health.

Deng did not give the details of the other victim. According to regulations, the local health authority where such deaths occur should be the one to announce it, he said.

So far, 15 people have suffered severe side effects including anaphylactic shocks (sudden drop in blood pressure or difficulty in breathing) after taking the jab, said Liu Dawei, a vaccination expert with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

These people will get free treatment and cash compensation," Liu said.

Till Thursday, more than 12 million people had been vaccinated against the H1N1 flu virus, with 1,235 complaining of side effects, the Ministry of Health said. Most of the reactions, however, have been mild and temporary.

Preliminary results of the Hunan victim's autopsy show he could have died after suffering a sudden cardiac arrest, which experts say kills more than 1,700 people in the country each day.

"The Hunan teacher's death is a coincidental medical incident," Liu said.

The exact cause of his death can be known only after all his medical records, including the final autopsy report, are studied, Deng said. But the batch of vaccines from which he got the jab has been withdrawn as a precautionary measure.

The autopsy on the other victim was likely to be performed on Friday night, Deng said.

No vaccine is risk-free, but the influenza vaccine is among the safest, said Vivian Tan, press officer of the World Health Organization's Beijing office.

"We have observed minor side effects like sore arm, red rashes, low fever and headache among the people who have taken the jab. Severe side effects are very uncommon. But it's important to monitor the situation closely," Tan said.

China To Punish if Cases Are Not Recorded as Swine Flu, Even If Something ELSE 11/20/09 11:45am

China To Punish if Cases Are Not Recorded as Swine Flu, Even If Something ELSE

In reading this (between the lines) to me, it ultimately says China will punish Doctors who do not declare all deaths from Swine flu, even if "pneumonia" or another serious cause is actually the reason for deaths.

See what you think

Article:

CHINA has promised severe punishment for officials caught concealing deaths from H1N1 flu after a medical expert said suspect cases may have been held back by local governments.
The Health Ministry said China had adopted a new H1N1 accounting method earlier this month. If a person was confirmed with H1N1 and then died, the case should be reported as death from H1N1, whether or not there was another condition.

"People responsible will be punished if reports of H1N1 virus cases are held back, lied about or delayed," said Deng Haihua, spokesman for China's Health Ministry, according to a notice on the ministry's website seen today.

Zhong Nanshan, respected by many in China for his candour and work fighting "severe acute respiratory syndrome" (SARS) in 2003, said he did not believe that the national H1N1 death toll of 53, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.

Dr Zhong, who is now a doctor based in southern province of Guangdong, said that "some areas have not been testing deaths from severe (pneumonia) and treating them as cases of ordinary pneumonia without any question".

The H1N1 flu strain affects the respiratory tract.

Patients who become severely ill or die typically suffer from pneumonia, either brought on directly by the virus or due to secondary bacterial infections.

The previous method attributed the death to previously existing conditions but not to H1N1, thereby reducing the number of cases reported as H1N1 death cases, a separate notice on the Health Ministry's website said.

A ministry official said it would no longer issue cumulative tolls, only new cases and deaths.

That will make it difficult to determine the actual extent of H1N1 deaths in China, which based on previous figures had been statistically much lower than in other countries.

Recombinomics says what is killing those In the Ukraine - Also in Killing in Other Countries 11/9/09 7:24am est

Recombinomics says the hemorrhagic pneumonia killing those In Ukraine - Also in Other Countries

Recombinomics says this hemorrhagic pneumonia (not H1N1 - in other words - lungs bleeding) is linked to other countries - notice they say "patients who developed a cytokine storm" - that is exactly what people have been warning about, of what will occur with the Swine Flu Vaccine! They are again asking for results of exactly what it is killing people, but no results are being forthcoming.

From Article: (again this is a medical article - can be hard to understand with all the genes and medical terms used)

1918 RBD Polymorphsm in Ukraine H1N1?
Recombinomics Commentary 04:22
November 9, 2009

The recent explosion of H1N1 cases in Ukraine (see map) has focused attention on sequences linked to the outbreak, especially those in the lungs of patients who developed a cytokine storm. This hemorrhagic pneumonia has been described previously in other fatal swine flu infections, but that rapid increase in reported deaths in Ukraine has raised concerns that the virus is transmitting more efficiently, or is replicating at higher levels in lung tissue.

These changes are frequently linked to changes in the receptor binding domain (RBD) in the HA protein. Changes in this domain can affect affinity for receptors and also modify tissue tropism. The recent expansion of seasonal H3N2 with M2 S31N was linked to two changes in or near the receptor binding domain, S193F and D225N.

Recent isolates from Sao Paulo, Brazil, collected from necropsy tissue from fatal cases had two changes at position 225. Two of the isolates, A/Sao Paulo/53845/2009 and A/Sao Paulo/53838/2009) had D225N (see list), the same change seen in seasonal H3N2. Interestingly, the swine H1N1 is a triple reassortant with flu genes from swine, humans, and birds. The human gene is PB1 and it was acquired in swine infected with a human H3N2. The initial isolates had three human genes, the H3 and N2 as well as the PB1. Thus, the prior association of the human PB1 in isolates with human H3,may increase the advantage offered by D225N.

However, two other isolates from Sau Paulo, A/Sau Paulo/53225/2009 and A/Sau Paulo/53206/2009, collected from the lungs of fatal cases, had another change at position 225, D225G. This polymorphism is more widespread and recent isolates have been found in Japan, Italy, and China (see list ). Moreover this polymorphism has been found in two isolates from the 1918/1919 pandemic, A/New York/1/1918 and A/London/1/1919. Thus, in 1918 the H1N1 virus usually had a D at position 225, but some of the later isolates had D225G, which parallels the data from the 2009 swine H1N1 isolates.

These RBD changes in recent isolates from Sao Paulo, as well as the presence of D225G in sequences from 1918/1919 raise concerns that the swine H1N1 is adapting to its human host by acquisition of RBD polymorphisms.

The explosion of cases in Ukraine, and delays in the release of sequences from fatal cases in Ukraine is a cause for increasing concern. Recent accelerations of deaths have been widespread across the northern hemisphere, raising concerns that receptor binding domain changes described above, as well as a third polymorphism at position 225, D225E, (see list) are gaining traction as the swine H1N1 adapts to human hosts.

An update on the Mill Hill sequences and deposit of such sequences at a public database such as GISAID, where Mill Hill recently deposited sequences from Europe, would be useful.


I am not a doctor - but it seems to me, someone should question if those dying had recently had the Swine Flu vaccine. But I won't count on that actually happening.