Britain tests bird flu readiness

An exercise simulating what would happen in the event of a major bird flu outbreak in Britain is taking place today.

Vets, farmers and government officials are all taking part in the real-time exercise, which is being conducted indoors.

Exercise Hawthorn is designed to test British readiness for a major outbreak of avian flu, and is based on an imaginary scenario whereby the country is three days into the outbreak.

In the scenario, the first outbreak was discovered at a free-range poultry farm in Norfolk and there are two more suspected outbreaks in Wales and in the north of England.

“Although the bird disease has been around in south-east Asia for some years, it has proved itself very difficult to transfer from human to human and there’s no sign yet that that is changing,” Rural affairs minister Ben Bradshaw told the Today programme.

And he was dismissive of suggestions said to have been made by virology expert Professor John Oxford that immediate vaccination of poultry flocks should be given serious consideration as it would be too late to do this when the disease reached Britain.

“Professor John Oxford’s advice and predictions are very interesting because back as far ago as last August he was predicting that bird flu was imminent in this country, that its arrival was imminent; he’s been proved wrong on that,” he said.

The deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus is not yet able to pass between humans, but experts fear that it could mutate and put millions of lives at risk.

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