Bird flu screening to be expanded

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, and Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Monday in a joint news conference that they believe the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus will arrive in the United States, possibly in 2006.

In urging calm, Johanns stressed that detection of the virus in birds "will not mean the start of a pandemic among people." The three Cabinet secretaries announced that their departments would expand screening for bird flu.

Norton said her agency would continue to test migratory birds as well as birds killed by hunters and those killed in Alaska native hunts. Norton said tests would be conducted on more than 75,000 birds in 2006. The birds would not be killed, she noted.

Norton said initial tests showing the presence of bird flu would be announced, though the tests cannot be confirmed until the material is sent for further analysis to a USDA laboratory in Ames, Iowa.

Norton said officials would decide later whether any positive tests for the bird flu would affect hunting seasons. She said there have been no reports of humans getting avian influenza from wild birds. "Cooking kills the virus," Norton said.

In his statement, Leavitt noted that President Bush sought $7.1 billion to fund preparations, but Congress appropriated $3.8 billion last year. Since November, Leavitt, said, avian influenza has spread from 16 countries to 37 countries, infecting 175 people of whom 96 have died.

"We are in a race against a fast-moving virus with the potential to cause influenza pandemic," he said. The arrival of the bird flu in the United States, he said, "should not be a cause for alarm or panic," but it should "motivate us to pick up the pace, renew pandemic preparations on every front at every level."

Leavitt said he is planning summits in all 50 states on bird flu.