Masterplan on bird flu was promised weeks ago

MINISTERS have missed their own deadline for updating and improving Britain's contingency plans for dealing with a flu pandemic, The Scotsman can reveal.

The damaging disclosure came as the bird-flu outbreak in Suffolk heightened fears that the avian form of the virus could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted between humans.

The Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, yesterday said the government was preparing "very seriously" for a flu pandemic. The H5N1 strain of the avian flu virus found at the Bernard Matthews turkey farm in Holton can only be passed to humans who have close contact with blood and excrement from infected birds.

A mutation into a more easily transmissible form of flu is the greatest fear of scientists. Government estimates suggest a human pandemic could kill hundreds of thousands of people in Britain alone.

Ministers last year began a comprehensive review of the Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan, the UK-wide strategy for dealing with such an outbreak.

The plan is intended to set out advice and procedures for health workers, emergency services, local authorities and other public bodies.

Revealing the review of the strategy in December, the Department of Health (DoH) promised MPs the new contingency plan "will have a broader scope than just the health response and cover wider areas of national planning". The DoH said the new plan would be published "in early January".

But last night, the department admitted no updated version of the plan was available. A DoH spokeswoman was unable to say why the deadline had been missed, or when the new plan would be issued.

The absence of a central plan yesterday exposed ministers to accusations that the government was paralysed and unable to make important decisions. Fuelling those charges, Mrs Hewitt was yesterday unable to say whether the NHS planned to buy more face masks and respirators for health workers to use in the event of a pandemic.

France announced last year that it was stockpiling masks, planning to have enough to issue one to every person in the country in the event of a human pandemic. In October last year, health ministers told parliament they were urgently considering the possibility of buying more masks and respirators for Britain.

But yesterday, Mrs Hewitt was still unable to give details. "The NHS has its normal stockpile of masks already in place. We're looking at whether we need to do much more than that," the minister said. "We will very quickly decide whether or not we need to be stockpiling much more."

The Conservatives said Mrs Hewitt's remarks showed the government's planning was inadequate. "It is absurd for Patricia Hewitt to say she is quickly looking into the effectiveness of face masks," said Andrew Lansley, shadow health secretary.

"It is simply a matter of making an effective and timely decision, something that is difficult for a government in paralysis to do."

H5N1 was first detected in Britain last year in the body of a wild swan found in Cellardyke in Fife. The incident proved to be isolated, but the Suffolk case has renewed fears of a wider infection in the UK poultry flock.

Officials were due to complete the culling of all 159,000 turkeys at the Bernard Matthews farm early this morning. But a "restriction zone" of 806 square miles around the farm is likely to remain in place for days to come.

Professor Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser, insisted the Suffolk case had no implications for human health. "This doesn't add to the likelihood of it leading to a human pandemic at all," he said. "This doesn't add to the scare one little bit."

However, David Nabarro, the UN bird-flu envoy, said: "I wouldn't be surprised if we see outbreaks in other European countries during the next few weeks and months."

Amid fears for the UK poultry industry, Scottish farmers are confident that experiences such as the Cellardyke case have left them well-prepared.

Quintin Dunlop, the owner of Scotlay Eggs in Maybole, Ayrshire, said: "The serious players in this country have steps in place on a farm-by-farm basis.

"These measures are well-known in the industry and any producer worth their salt is already taking the threat very seriously indeed. The main issue is restricting access on farms."

A spokeswoman for the National Farmers Union said: "There's not really a lot more that could or should be done. Scottish farmers will know what to do and what the procedures are."

A spokeswoman for the Executive said that, in the light of last year's experience, no new advice was being issued to farmers.

Cunning viral adversary still poses little risk to humans

SO H5N1 has arrived.

How worried should we be? The bottom line is that this strain of bird flu is still just that, a virus of birds, not humans. For us to catch it, very intimate contact with a sick bird - one excreting massive amounts of virus - is essential. This is because the only cells it sticks to in our respiratory tract are those deep in the lungs, a place that is extremely hard for the virus to reach. In contrast, human flu viruses attach to the cells in the back of the throat. Much smaller amounts of virus are needed to start an infection.

So the presence of the virus in turkeys in Suffolk does not pose a health risk to the public. Hypothetically, those culling the birds might be vulnerable, but they will be wearing masks and full protective clothing, and have been given (the drug) tamiflu. The risk to them is microscopic.

The big concerns about H5N1 and human health remain theoretical ones. They are that, at some point, the virus will acquire the ability to infect people much more readily and will gain the ability to spread from person to person, which it does not do at present. The nightmare scenario is that is does these things while keeping its ability to kill. Although it is very poor at infecting people, when it does, H5N1 causes a lethal pneumonia in about half of its victims.

The situation in which H5N1 becomes easy for humans to pass to each other might happen in two ways - either by mutations in virus genes, or by recombination. The latter could happen if a cell was infected simultaneously with an H5N1 strain and an influenza that grows well in humans. The reshuffling of the genes of the two strains might lead to the creation of a new virus with pandemic potential.

Previous pandemics have been caused by such viruses. They have swept the globe because the proteins on the outside of the virus particle, the ones which our immune system recognise, come from the bird virus component. As we have never been infected with them, we have no immunity.

So far, H5N1 has shown no real sign of changing in this way. It could be said that the longer time goes by - and the virus has been around in its present form for more than a decade - the less likely such a development will happen. But only fools predict evolution!

So at present in the UK, H5N1 is only an immediate worry to poultry producers. But the fact that it got into an establishment with high-quality biosecurity shows we are up against a cunning adversary.

• Professor Hugh Pennington is an Aberdeen University microbiologist.

Deadly strain's movement through Europe

• 12 October, 2005 - Samples of infected birds from Turkey are brought to the UK for testing at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Surrey.

• 13 October, 2005 - The European Commission reveals the birds in Turkey were carrying the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.

• 5 January, 2006 - Two Turks die and are later found to have been infected with H5N1. They are the first human cases outside of south-east Asia and the closest yet to the UK.

• 17 February, 2006 - The spread of the H5N1 virus gathers pace as it reaches France and several other European countries, including Germany and Italy, in this month alone.

• 17 February, 2006 - Senior British vets say reports that a duck in Lyons, France, died from H5N1 "increases the likelihood" that the virus may be found in the UK.

• 22 February, 2006 - Vets stand by the government's policy of culling any infected flocks, despite calls for the use of vaccination.

• 28 February, 2006 - The government's chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir David King, predicts bird flu will arrive in the UK and remain for at least five years.

• 1 March, 2006 - A team of scientists, doctors and industry experts begin looking for new ways of tackling the threat of H5N1.

• 5 April, 2006 - A dead swan found in the Cellardyke area of Fife, is confirmed to have been carrying the H5 form of the virus.

• 6 April, 2006 - Europe's biggest turkey producer announces it is doing all it can to protect its flocks from avian flu. Staff at Bernard Matthews say precautions against the virus are "at a maximum" and have been for the last six months.

• 6 April, 2006 - The Scottish Executive announces the dead swan which washed up in a harbour in Cellardyke tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus.

• 13 April, 2006 - A report on the DEFRA website says the infected swan found in Cellardyke may have come from Germany.

• 3 February, 2007 - The EU Commission confirms that the potentially deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is found among turkeys at a Bernard Matthews poultry farm in Suffolk.