TACOMA – As a global hub for trade and travel, Washington state has an added burden in preparing for a possible flu pandemic, Gov. Chris Gregoire said Friday at a summit with leading public health officials.
State and federal legislators have responded with millions of dollars to beef up health infrastructure, but spreading the message of preparation to the public is just as important, Gregoire said.
“Do we scare the dickens out of them? I don’t think so. Do we arm them with information? Yes, that is absolutely what we have to do,” Gregoire told a crowd of about 1,000 people.
The summit was part of state-by-state efforts coordinated by the federal government to help government officials prepare for a potential flu pandemic.
Scientists are watching for the North American arrival of a form of bird flu that has spread through waterfowl and shorebirds in Asia and parts of Europe and Africa.
Outbreaks have killed or led to the slaughter of more than 200 million chickens, ducks, turkeys and other domestic fowl.
Migratory birds flying from Asia across the Bering Strait are the most likely carriers of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, scientists say.
“We’re watching a very specific virus move very quickly through a very large population of birds, and continuously evolve. That’s worrisome,” said Julie Gerberding, director of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The bird flu has jumped to humans in some cases – there are about 110 known human deaths, mostly in Asia.
Still, the U.S. government’s top bird flu scientist told The Associated Press earlier this week that bird flu is not likely to change overnight so that it spreads from person to person, nor is it likely that a sick bird migrating to the U.S. will trigger human illness.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health’s infectious disease chief, said in a Washington, D.C., interview that there’s no way to know the odds that the H5N1 strain of bird flu will spark the next worldwide influenza epidemic. But the virus would have to undergo a series of genetic changes before it could become contagious among humans instead of just birds.
At Friday’s summit, Alex Azar, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said local and state emergency networks would be the most important lines of help in any major flu outbreak in humans.
Pointing to the fractured response to last year’s Gulf Coast hurricanes, Azar and others at the meeting said the public should not count on the federal government alone to descend with immediate help.
Gregoire also warned that an estimated 42,000 people traveling to the state each week present a possible entry point for pandemic diseases.
State officials are awaiting nearly $2 million from the federal government to help ramp up infrastructure for public health emergencies such as a flu pandemic. The state is matching that spending with about $2 million for public health planning, mostly on the local level, Gregoire said.
State and county officials in Washington plan to continue a series of intensive exercises to work through a mock flu outbreak in the coming months, and the state is launching a campaign to remind Washingtonians of the simplest disease control methods: covering a cough and washing your hands.
Officials say H5N1 has infected about 190 people in all, mostly in developing countries. Virtually all caught it from close contact with sick chickens. They were mostly small children or local farmers who handled not just the birds but their droppings, which contain high amounts of virus.
Still, Gregoire said Washington’s preparations will help the state remain ready for future threats from diseases other than the flu.
“As sure as I’m sitting here, 10 years from now, we’ll be talking about something else,” she noted.
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