Bird flu ‘unlikely to spread from cats to people’

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) said the threat to people is unknown but appears small after H5N1 bird flu infected a German cat, heightening fears of a future human pandemic.

“We don’t know,” said WHO spokesman Dick Thompson when asked about the risks of the disease spreading from cats to humans.

“Is it significant? That’s impossible to tell at this time, but it doesn’t appear so.”

The cat in Germany was the first mammal in Europe known to be infected with H5N1. Other felines, including tigers, leopards and domestic cats, have caught the disease in Asia.

Tests due later in the day were expected to confirm that the German cat - found on the Baltic island of Ruegen where H5N1 was detected in birds earlier this month - had the highly pathogenic form of the H5N1 virus. It is unknown whether cats can transmit the disease.

The H5N1 virus has so far shown no ability to spread from human to human. More than 90 people have been killed by the disease since 2003 but all are believed to have been infected by contact with birds.

The big fear is that H5N1 may mix with human forms of influenza and mutate into a form that can pass between humans, launching a pandemic that could kill millions.

“This is a virus that isn’t acting in a predictable way. It’s unusual that cats would be infected at all. The range of hosts here is unusual for an avian virus,” Mr Thompson said.

“Pigs are known to be able to be infected by both avian and human viruses, and they too can serve as mixing vessels, just like humans,” he warned.

“But beyond that we can’t say with any certainty.”

The virus appeared to be defying efforts to stamp it out in the bird population across Europe, Asia and Africa.

France is vaccinating 700,000 domestic ducks and geese on farms after detecting the first outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in a European Union poultry farm at the weekend.

Paris said 43 countries were now restricting or banning imports of poultry and poultry products from France.

Elsewhere in Europe, H5N1 was detected this week in Bosnia, the southern German state of Bavaria and a southwestern Russian farm where 103,000 birds died in a week. It also is suspected to have infected ducks in Sweden.

In Asia, the epicentre of the bird flu pandemic, Indonesian authorities reported that two people had been admitted to a Jakarta hospital Wednesday on suspicion of having contracted the virus.