Bird flu could spread to humans, health chiefs fear

Whitehall officials now simulating scenarios on which action to take should virus infect population

‘A teaspoon full of infected bird droppings will have thousands and thousands of infected viral doses in it’

HEALTH chiefs are running simulated emergency drills so they are ready to act should the bird flu virus sweeping the UK jump to humans, say Whitehall officials.

Speaking ahead of a mandatory “housing order,” or lockdown, for farmed birds coming into force on Monday, the chief veterinary officer Dr Christine Middlemiss said everything possible was being done to protect human as well as animal health.

In addition to simulations, she said this included testing the virus at each infected farm for new mutations and offering workers antivirals as a precaution. “Because this is a zoonotic disease, it has the potential to infect people” said Dr Middlemiss.

“We exercise frequently with the UK Health Security Agency and others for those scenarios happening.”

More than 3.8 millions birds have been culled in the UK this year following Avian H5N1 outbreaks and the virus continues to move fast among both farmed and wild bird populations.

In densely packed populations, the reproduction, or “R” rate can be as high as 100, meaning one bird will infect as many as 100 others.

“A teaspoon full of infected bird droppings will have thousands and thousands of infected viral doses in it,” Dr Middlemiss said. “It takes a really small amount of virus to create an outbreak.”

The virus has not mutated sufficiently to spread between humans, but people working in close proximity to infected birds can and do catch the disease. According to the World Health Organization, 868 people have become infected with AH5N1 since 2003, with 456 deaths reported in 21 countries. Dr Middlemiss said the risk to the general population remained “low”. This is also the view of the WHO, although for “occupationally exposed persons” it describes the risk as “low to moderate”.

“We’re not being complacent,” Dr Middlemiss told The Telegraph. “In every infected premise we … look at the genomics of individual isolates. Is the virus changing? Has it become more humanised? … We’re confident at the moment that that is not happening, but we keep looking just in case.”

Dr Middlemiss said she was working “18 to 20 hours a day” as the virus ravaged avian populations across the country. She said that although a large number of birds had been culled and more would inevitably follow, the numbers were small in terms of the UK’S total poultry population.

This meant that the bird flu pandemic did not pose a threat in terms of the UK’S “food security”.