CNN Paula Zahn with Sanjay Gupta on Birdflu

[Mellie]

Saw this CNN news report this evening. It was serious. Got my attention...
Following that, Fauci was on the NBC (CBS ?) with Brian Williams and on CNN Wolf Blitzer. That seemed pretty serious too. I got the feeling he'd announce a change in WHO Pandemic Phase if it was up to him, but I'm speculating here. (Couldn't find a transcript of what he said.)

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05...ex.html#second
DANIELLE ELIAS, CNN STUDENT NEWS ANCHOR:

On this Thursday, May 25th, we welcome you to CNN Student News! I'm Danielle Elias at CNN Center. Going through the motions: New Orleans is using a special disaster drill to make sure it can get residents to safety if another big storm roars in. All access pass: We'll take you inside what's known as "ground zero for bird flu"... Where scientists try to keep the disease from spreading its wings. And if you know which cities the Congo river runs through... You could be up here yourself when next year's geography bee gets going!

Battling Bird Flu

ELIAS: You might have heard that word before when we've talked about bird flu. At this point, the disease is not a pandemic among humans. But scientists are afraid it could become one and affect millions of people around the world. Andrew Stevens tells us how that could happen and explains why some experts' fears are centered on the Asian nation of Indonesia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN REPORTER: Bird flu has killed 124 people worldwide; nearly a quarter of them in Indonesia. The victim here ... 8-year-old Rafael Ginting. Rafael lived and died in a small village in northern Indonesia. His death, a tragedy in itself, but one which could also signal a dangerous new development. Rafael's family has been decimated by an outbreak of bird flu. Eight family members contracted the deadly H5N1 strain, seven are now dead.

It's the biggest of what doctors call... "a cluster of deaths".. reported yet. More sorrying still, experts sent to the village can't find out how Rafael's family contracted the virus. Alarm bells are ringing at the World Health Organization.

PETER CORDINGLEY, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: They can't find an animal source for this infection and that worries us. And in the absence of a known animal source, we have to treat this as possible human-to-human transmission of the virus.

STEVENS: Human-to human transmission of the deadly strain of bird flu is the single biggest fear of health authorities worldwide. It has happened before, but only in extremely isolated cases. That's because in its current form, the virus cannot pass easily between humans. Experts agree that for a worst-case to occur, a human-to-human pandemic, which could affect millions of people, the virus would have to mutate, or change, so it could be more easily be transmitted. Tests from the victims in Indonesia show that none of those mutations have occurred. Still many virologists say a pandemic is all but inevitable.

PROF LEO POON, VIROLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG: It's a matter of time. If we allow the virus to circulate in the poultry long enough, somehow it will have a chance to mutate itself and then make it adaptable to humans and then make it the next disaster to humans.

STEVENS: Indonesia is currently at the center of the bird flu outbreaks, a fact the WHO finds deeply disturbing.

CORDINGLEY: Indonesia at the moment has very very serious problems with this virus. Lots of cases this year and it doesn't seem to be any closer to control.

STEVENS: The Indonesian government says its doing all it can. But for victims like Rafael, it's too late for help. Andrew Stevens, CNN, Hong Kong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Are We Ready?

ELIAS: Experts agree it's only a matter of time before bird flu arrives in the U.S.. Wild birds can carry the disease without getting sick from it. And domesticated birds that can usually die from it very quickly. But U.S. officials aren't just sitting around waiting for the worst to happen. Doctor Sanjay Gupta takes us to America's first line of research and defense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to ground zero for bird flu. If, scratch that, when H5N1 is first found in the United States, it will likely be in a dead bird and it will likely be confirmed right here. Here, they have been preparing for that moment for nearly ten years.

DR. GRANGER: Whether or not this is H5N1 is a question that needs to be answered. This is where that question would be answered.

GUPTA: We've made our way to Ames, Iowa. This is one of the biggest laboratories around. And if there are bird flu samples, there's a good chance they'll actually end up here to be confirmed. Luckily, we are not there yet. So the USDA opened their doors to CNN for the first time. Cameras have never been allowed into this unassuming building. A swipe card and a fingerprint just to get through the door. Lots of protective gear

I've got all my garb on now. You can see my gloves, my booties down here. Safety glasses back up here and a hair net. The whole goal, more than anything else, is to protect me from the chickens. These chickens are not "HOT" meaning they do not have highly pathogenic avian influenza. But if they did, I would probably have to take off all my clothes, put on some scrubs, be a little bit more in protection, and probably have to take a shower on the way out. We might not even be able to get some of the images we're getting right now because the camera could be a potential problem as well. The protective gear makes me feel at least a little more safe. The doors and the rooms are airlocked. Nothing gets in and nothing gets out.

OK this is the room I've been talking about, the room where the actual chickens are located. Let me show you this, these are some of the chickens that are going to have some of the first cases of avian flu in the country. If there were a case of avian flu, those chickens very well could end up here.

GUPTA: These chickens could go from perfectly healthy to dead in a very short amount of time. And that's why we're here today - to try and figure out exactly what happens when bird flu infects these birds, and more importantly, what happens when that virus is spread among humans.

And so the fight has begun, lab workers hurriedly preparing. Here, they use chicken eggs with nine day old embryos... Yes, that is a living embryo... They showed me how to drill a hole in the top of the egg. They've been injected with the virus. The goal: To let the virus multiply so they can identify H5N1 and fight it even better.

Right now the virus is still primarily located in birds. Here in Ames, Iowa, they are hoping with all of their work, it stays that way. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Ames, Iowa.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[Mellie]

CNN: Dr Fauci with Wolf Blitzer on the "Situation Room" on Birdflu

OK, here's Dr Fauci (NIH) with Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...itroom.02.html

Aired May 24, 2006 - 17:00 ET

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And to our viewers, you're in THE SITUATION ROOM, where new pictures and information are arriving all the time.
Standing by, CNN reporters across the United States and around the world to bring you today's top stories.

Happening now, did bird flu spread from human to human in wiping out an Indonesian family? Why is a European capital right now under partial quarantine?

It's 5:00 p.m. here in Washington. As fears grow about a possible pandemic, I'll speak with America's point man on infectious diseases.

(snip)

I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.

There are growing concerns right now about bird flu with troubling new developments heightening fear of a possible pandemic. Health officials are focusing in on two potential hotspots.

We have complete coverage for you this hour. Let's begin with CNN's Mary Snow. She's watching all of these developments from New York -- Mary.

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, we'll get to those hotspots in a moment, but the headline tonight, officials are searching for possible human-to-human transmission of avian flu in Asia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SNOW (voice over): In a sign that countries are worried, the Romanian government has quarantined hundreds of residents in two districts of the capital of Bucharest, concerned they may have been exposed to birds with avian influenza. So far, no confirmed sickness. In Indonesia, six family members died in what health officials say is the largest known cluster of humans dying from bird flu, prompting the World Health Organization to make this sober statement...

PETER CORDINGLY, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: We have a team down there. They're examining what is going on. And they can't find an animal source of this infection. And that worries us. And in the absence of a known animal source, we have to treat this as possibly human-to-human transmission of the virus.

SNOW: Health officials stress that the H5N1 flu found in this family has not mutated in a way that is easily passed from person to person. It's not the first case of human-to-human transmission of avian flu, but officials say it's the largest. They are now investigating if anyone who had contact with the family may have contracted the disease.

DR. PAUL GULLY, WHO: Well, what we're trying to identify, if it has occurred, is what we call sustained human-to-human transmission, i.e., one human giving it to another and giving it to another, and so on and so forth, because that would indicate that we have the potential for a pandemic.

SNOW: If that happens -- and officials stress it's a big "if" -- it would raise the level of pandemic plans. What would happen in the U.S.?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: If it occurs, then that would trigger a number of events of preparedness to the next level. And some of it might be and could be restriction of travel to a particular area where there seems to be rather easy spread from person to person, which is, again, I underscore, not the case we're seeing now in Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SNOW: Concerns about travel were reflected in the stock market. Airline stocks in both the U.S. and Europe traded lower out of concern that international travel may be affected the way it was in 2003 when there was a SARS outbreak in Asia -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Mary, thanks for that.

Let's get a little closer look at some of the areas we're talking about. Tom Foreman is here in THE SITUATION ROOM with us.

Show our viewers where this is unfolding.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's look first at the big issue of where the bird flu has affected bird populations. If you look at the world right now, this is the big hotspot, all of the yellow spaces here over in Europe, Asia, and now on to Africa.

If we rotate the globe here, all of the golden areas are places where they have had bird flu out breaks among poultry. If you come on around to the western hemisphere, the deadly strain has basically not shown up over here. But -- and this is the big issue now -- the human cases. You go back around the world here, and if you look at the places where human cases have been found, there have been more than 200 of them. About half the people who have contracted this disease have died. And so far, in Europe, in Asia, and on over into Africa, the general sense has been that has always been from people who have been around poultry or who have been involved in handling birds, or things that were associated with birds.

The big issue, of course, is this mutation, whether or not it becomes something that transmits from humans to other humans. And thereby, you get rid of the bird as the transmitter. The worry about that is that these red areas, which so far represent only the places where humans have contracted it from birds, could then become places where people are passing it to each other.

And look at this, China, down here into Indonesia, populations where people are moving all over the world. And if it's transmitting this way, that potentially becomes an avenue for this transmitting much further, much faster.

BLITZER: Let's hope that never happens.

Thanks, Tom, very much.

So what should we make of these latest bird flu developments? We took our questions to one of this country's top experts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And joining us now here in THE SITUATION ROOM is Dr. Anthony Fauci. He's the director of the Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Fauci, a couple major problems potentially developing right now. First, in Romania, they're quarantining a whole district right now. There is suspicion of bird flu there. What do you make of this latest report we're getting from Romania?

FAUCI: I think the Romanian report really is just a reflection of how a particular country is dealing with the fact they have infected chickens and people exposed to the chickens. I don't think it tells us much about what the virus is doing there. It's a rather aggressive precautionary measure that the Romanian authorities are taking.

It's not surprising that they do that. They're concerned about that. But we'll have to leave it up to those local authorities of how they handle when they get flocks of chickens that are inflected and when they have exposure of humans. They just want to make sure that the people who have been exposed to those chickens, if, in fact, they do get infected -- and there's no indication that there's massive infection there at all -- they just want to make sure that the exposed individuals don't ultimately spread it to other people. And for that reason, they're doing the containment method that you just described.

BLITZER: Perhaps more worrisome is what has happened in Indonesia in recent days. One family infected with bird flu. According to World Health Organization authorities, may have passed that on from family member to family member.

What is the latest information you're getting on that? Because if there is human-to-human passing on of the bird flu virus, that could be enormously significant.

FAUCI: Well, what it looks like we have, if you look at the data as it has unfolded, that it is likely that there was transmission from one person to another within that family cluster, particularly a father who was very close to a child, taking care of a child who was very seriously ill. And other members of the family, for example, who were sleeping in the same room together, when one person was coughing very vehemently and was acutely ill.

So it is -- it cannot be ruled out, and it is likely that we do have limited human-to-human transmissibility within this family. That's of concern. Those are the kinds of things we need to keep an eye on.

The somewhat encouraging news thus far within the framework of a serious situation is that there have not been other cases outside of the family unit. In other words, not a casual contact, not any of the nurses or the doctors or others who were taking care of them. So this could be a reflection of one of those unusual cases where you do get a family cluster.

You might recall we discussed some time ago, Wolf, that there was a similar smaller group of people in Thailand a couple of years ago when a mother and an aunt got it from a 10 or 11-year-old child who was seriously ill. This looks like that kind of pattern.

We need to observe it carefully, take it seriously, and just hope it does not go beyond that particular group, which it looks like it has not at this point, gone beyond the immediate exposure of that family.

BLITZER: So, as far as you know, there's no evidence to suggest that the virus has mutated to a form where it would go from human to human, which clearly would spark a pandemic?

FAUCI: Well, actually, if you look at the virus and the mutation aspect, what we call the molecular makeup, we have looked at a few of those viral isolates and there's no evidence at all that there's any mutations that would suggest what you're referring to. And it's still a purely bird virus.

So it has not assumed any other genes that might make it spread more readily from person to person that we would make that projection if we saw that. So it looks like the same virus that has been circulating in that area for some time now, that fundamentally has gone only from chicken to human, chicken to human, and stopped. This family cluster is an example of limited spread from a person to person within a family, but the virus itself does not seem to have changed at all from what we were looking at months ago.

BLITZER: So, to our viewers watching right now, especially in North America, what words of advice would you have for them?

FAUCI: I think we take this seriously. And we should. We, as public health authorities, we should be following it very closely.

We should continue the same kind of preparedness that we have been doing all along. Some people say, well, this is a wakeup call. Well, in some respects it's not, because the wakeup call came a long time ago when we knew that there was a potential for a pandemic flu. So we need to continue to aggressively prepare the way we have been doing now for several months to well over a year.

BLITZER: Dr. Fauci, thanks very much for joining us.

FAUCI: Good to be here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)