Vets urge calm over cat death from bird flu
By Philippe Naughton and Jenny Booth
The British Veterinary Association urged pet-owners not to panic today after news emerged that the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu had been confirmed in a cat in Germany.
The dead cat was found on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea, home to dozens of H5N1-infected wild birds, the Friedrich Loeffler institute said. It was the first time that the virus has been positively identified in Europe in an animal other than a bird.
More than 90 people in Asia and Turkey have died after contracting the H5N1 virus from infected poultry, but although the virus is gradually spreading across mainland Europe, there have been no cases of human infection.
The first known infection of cats with bird flu came in 2004 when more than 20 tigers and a leopard died after being fed infected poultry carcases. Several domestic cats were also infected.
A study that same year at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam demonstrated not just that cats could contract bird flu but that they could pass it on between themselves.
Writing in the journal Science, the Dutch researchers said: "The implications are that, during H5N1 virus outbreaks, domestic cats are at risk of disease or death from H5N1 virus infection, either due to feeding on infected poultry or wild birds, or due to contact with infected cats."
They added that the role of cats in spreading the virus between poultry farms, and from poultry to humans needed to be reassessed and suggested that the presence of the virus in cats could enable the virus to mutate to make it more transmissible between mammals - increasing the risk of a human flu pandemic.
But Dr Freda Scott-Park, president of the British Veterinary Association, said today that the news from Germany should not cause pet-owners to panic and there was no evidence of widespread infection in Thailand of cats or dogs, which can also be infected.
"We're well aware that there is a small risk to other species but basically H5N1 really wants to live in birds; it doesn't really want to live in other species," Dr Scott-Park told Times Online. "The last thing we want to happen is for pet-owners to say right I want my cat or my dog put down now because it might have bird flu."
Of the risk that feline transmission could help the virus to mutate, Dr Scott-Park added: "As far as I know there is no evidence of cats being the mixing vessel. We recognise in the past that pigs have been the mixing vessel with previous avian viruses and it would be the transfer to pigs that we would be much more worried about."
Her message was backed up by Thomas Mettenleiter, head of the German institute which identified the virus in the dead cat. He said: "It has long been known from Asia that cats can be infected if they eat infected birds. An infection of humans, which theoretically cannot be ruled out, could probably only occur with very intimate contact to infected animals."
New of the cat's infection came as the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser admitted that bird flu would remain for at least five years.
Professor Sir David King said that he expected bird flu to reach UK shores in months, rather than days or weeks, due to the pattern of migratory paths. But, once here, he feared that the disease could prove hard to eradicate, lurking in the wild bird population.
Professor King told the BBC: "I would anticipate that avian flu will arrive at some point in the UK. We also have to anticipate that it will be here for five years-plus. We are talking about the possibility of this disease being endemic here in the UK as it did in China. It is a long-term factor."
Today the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) confirmed Professor King's view, warning that the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu - which has already infected farmed turkeys in France - was very likely to spread to domestic poultry in other continental countries.
"The spread of the infection to domestic poultry in other European and neighbouring countries is highly likely and may even be made worse by the arrival in Europe of possibly infected birds from Africa and the Middle East next spring," the Paris-based body said in a statement.
An OIE scientist said yesterday that the spread of the virus to the wild bird population, which moves in mass migrations across the Continent every spring and every autumn, has meant the situation in Europe was now akin "to living under machinegun fire".
France confirmed last week that it had suffered the first outbreak of the H5N1 virus at a farm in the European Union. The news has prompted some countries to ban French poultry.
Cases in wild birds have appeared across Europe, with Sweden today becoming the latest to announce its first cases of H5N1. Germany, which has suffered more than 100 cases, said that H5N1 had spread to a fifth province.
Meanwhile Kenya and Ethiopia are waiting for the results of tests to see if the virus has now spread to East Africa, after arriving in the central African states of Nigeria and neighbouring Niger.
There is little agreement on how to respond in Europe. France yesterday began a programme of vaccinating free-range ducks and geese in the South-west region to protect them from the virus, but the policy is controversial.
Professor King has ruled out the use of the currently available bird flu vaccines in the event of a UK outbreak, although he has since conceded they may have to be used for rare breeds of bird in zoos if the outbreak was widespread. The problem was that the existing H5N1 inoculation would mask signs of the virus in birds but not prevent its spread, he said.
"The Chinese have adopted the position of mass vaccination, and if it became so widespread here we might have to go down that route even with the vaccination not being very good," he said.
Sir David said the UK was currently monitoring the development in China of a new vaccine against the H5N1 strain of avian flu.
But not all scientists believe that Europe is reacting sensibly to bird flu. Alex Thiermann, president of the standard-setting committee for the OIE, has called poultry bans an over-reaction.
"Countries have far exceeded what is science-based and they have further complicated the losses to the industry," Thiermann told the New-Fields’ Bird Flu Summit, a meeting of avian influenza experts, in Alexandria, Virginia.
British commercial poultry owners who keep 50 birds or more have until today to register their flocks on the Department for the Environment Farming and Rural Affairs's new national poultry register. Keepers with fewer than 50 birds are not required to register at present but may do so voluntarily after today if they wish.
timesonline.co.uk
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