Statement on the Current Avian Flu Situation

Statement on the Current Avian Flu Situation

I wanted to address recent news headlines on the family cluster infected by avian flu in Indonesia. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) reports released on May 31 and June 6, the epidemiologic investigation has revealed that the disease is still fairly contained in the Kubu Simbelang Village in North Sumatra, Indonesia.

The original avian flu case, the index patient, was a woman who had close contact with her backyard chickens. Some of those chickens died prior to the beginning of her illness. Seven of her relatives, of whom six died, were confirmed by testing as being infected with the H5N1 avian flu virus. Her relatives most likely became infected when they spent the night in the sick patient's home or took personal care of her. Thus far, only her close relatives have been infected with avian flu. Since health care workers and neighboring villagers are not being infected, the pandemic alert phase remains at level 3 (very limited human-to-human transmission). In other words, it will currently not be raised to WHO pandemic alert phase 4 (increased human-to-human transmission).

The ongoing outbreaks in poultry and humans undermine the continued need to monitor and control avian influenza internationally. I have recently discussed the situation with the CDC and our efforts to gather timely and accurate information on avian flu outbreaks.

Yesterday, I also met with Dr. John Clifford, USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Chief Veterinary Officer. He provided me with an update on their efforts to protect poultry in the United States. Robust biosecurity measures exist for the commercial poultry sector and efforts to strengthen biosecurity measures for backyard poultry are under way. Increased wild bird surveillance, including testing for avian flu, has also begun in Alaska and across the nation.

In addition, I recently toured the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIAID Director, gave an excellent overview of the current research on vaccines for influenza as well as other diseases such as HIV, ebola, and SARS. He highlighted the need to both prepare for annual and pandemic influenza to decrease the mortality of this infectious disease. Dr. Gary Nabel, Director of the Vaccine Research Center, and Dr. Brian Murphy, the Co-Chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, also joined us on this visit. Many advances in understanding emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in order to better target vaccines are taking place.

Finally, I have been communicating with the Texas Department of State Health Services and Texas Animal Health Commission to further be in touch with my own state's preparedness efforts.

I believe that it is important to maintain these ongoing conversations on the federal, state, and local level to ensure that we are taking the necessary steps to keep up with the latest avian flu developments and preparing accordingly. Strengthening our emergency infrastructure and integrating our responses across all levels is one of my main focuses.

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