Queensland authorities try to contain Hendra virus outbreak

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJun 29 2011

The Queensland authorities have stepped up their efforts to contain an outbreak of the deadly Hendra virus on a farm near Beaudesert, south of Brisbane.

Deputy Premier Paul Lucas says Queensland Health and Biosecurity Queensland were contacted on Tuesday evening after a vet treating the horse on a farm at Kerry confirmed the animal had died from Hendra virus. Mr. Lucas revealed people on the farm will be quarantined and residents living in the surrounding area will be contacted. He said, “A horse that has died near Beaudesert has tested positive for Hendra virus. Queensland Health will be out in the community there at Kerry [and] at the farm talking to locals, talking to people at the farm site. At this stage we only know of one horse and that horse is deceased as a result of Hendra virus and that is a positive result.”

Mr Lucas added that it is too early to say how many people may have come into contact with the horse. “The first priority will be getting out there and talking to people on the farm and surrounding neighbours. The tests only came through in relation to the testing of the Hendra virus but it is something we will be treating seriously. The risk in the community from Hendra virus is very, very low but you know in the past those people who have contracted it, it becomes an extremely serious matter,” he explained.

The virus was first detected in September 1994 at a property in the Brisbane suburb of Hendra. Since then, there have been 14 outbreaks of the virus. Four of the seven people ever diagnosed with the virus have died. The last person to die from the virus was 55-year-old vet Alister Rodgers, after he caught the virus during an outbreak at a Cawarral property near Rockhampton in August 2009. Four horses died during the outbreak on the Cawarral property.

Hendra, named after the Brisbane suburb where the first cases were identified, has only ever been noted in the states of Queensland and New South Wales. There is no known cure for the virus, which has never been reported in humans outside Queensland. The CSIRO is currently developing a Hendra virus vaccine for horses which has had early success but is expected by 2013. The virus is considered too aggressive to be treated in horses once they have contracted it. It is transmitted to humans through direct contact with an infected horse's tissue.