首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
In July, almost unnoticed by the national press, a deadly bird virus arrived on a pheasant farm in Surrey. Experts from the Depa
In July, almost unnoticed by the national press, a deadly bird virus arrived on a pheasant farm in Surrey. Experts from the Depa
admin
2015-01-09
56
问题
In July, almost unnoticed by the national press, a deadly bird virus arrived on a pheasant farm in Surrey. Experts from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs(Defra)identified Newcastle disease, a virus usually mortal to turkeys and geese but not humans, in a flock of 9, 000 pheasant chicks imported from France ahead of the shooting season.
Within hours of the diagnosis, veterinary experts had swung into action, throwing up a 3km exclusion zone around the farm near Cobham and culling 10,000 birds. The carcasses were burned and premises cleaned to stop the virus escaping. It was four weeks before Defra’s Veterinary Exotic Diseases Division felt it was safe for poultry move virus, has reached Turkey, similar emergency plans are being readied by officials from Defra and other agencies. The scenario they are preparing for is that the H5N1 virus, which so far has led to the culling of billions of chickens in south-east Asia and 60 human deaths, will soon arrive on these shores.
What happens next depends on where the outbreak occurs, whether it can be contained and—most important of all—whether it mutates to become infectious between people. So far, only poultry workers or those directly exposed to chicken faeces or blood are thought to be at risk, though direct human-to-human transmission cannot be ruled out. "Every time a new person gets infected with the virus there is a small chance that person will trigger a pandemic," said Neil Ferguson, a scientist at Imperial College, who has been running simulations on what might happen were H5N1 to reach Britain. "It’s a very small chance, probably 1 in 1,000, 1 in 10,000 or less."
Should diseased birds reach Britain, the first step for veterinary officials would be to contain the outbreak as they did with Newcastle disease. An amber alert would be sounded and samples sent to the Veterinary Laboratory Agency(VLA)in Weybridge, Surrey. If Ian Brown, the head of avian virology there, confirms the cause of death as H5N1, the alert level will be raised to red and a whole series of emergency procedures, from quarantine, restriction of poultry movements to culling, will swing into action. Other agencies, such as the Department of Health, the Health Protection Agency and the Ministry of Defence, would be brought into the loop. In the event that the outbreak cannot be contained, Defra may have to consider mass culling programmes and the possibility of vaccination.
At this point, with the risk of the virus spreading to human populations, the Department of Health would appoint a UK national influenza pandemic committee to coordinate the response of hospital trusts and local authorities. The Civil Contingency Secretariat(CCS)of the Cabinet will also be alerted and Cobra, the emergency committee which coordinates Whitehall’s response to terrorism, readied for a possible breakdown in civil order.
The Department of Health’s pandemic preparedness plan published in March envisages as many as 54, 000 Britons dying in the first few months of a flu pandemic. But in June, CCS officials warned that that could be an underestimate. The more likely figure, they said, was 700,000—projection the Department of Health is expected to take on board when it updates its pandemic plan later this month.
In the most serious case, officials estimate there would be as many deaths in the 12 weeks of an epidemic as there usually are in a year. At the peak of the pandemic, 19,000 people would reguire hos-pital beds, prompting councils to requisition schools to accommodate the sick.
To treat the dying, the government would begin drawing down its stockpiles of Tamiflu(药名), an anti-viral drug that treats flu. But with only 14m courses, enough for a quarter of the population, likely to be available, sooner or later rationing would have to be imposed, with health professionals and essential civil servants the first in line. The government would also come under pressure to release stores of its precious flu vaccine. At present there are contingency plans for just two to three million doses. But there is no guarantee that vaccines which protect against annual human flu strains will also work against H5N1.
The consequences hardly bear thinking about. Earlier this year, in a dress rehearsal in the East Midlands codenamed, Operation Arctic Circle, officials quickly concluded that mass mortuaries would be needed to bury the dead. But no one knows whether, in the event of a pandemic, any of these measures will prove effective. John Avizienius, senior scientific officer at the RSPCA and a member of Defra’s avian influenza stakeholder group, said: "All you can do is plan for the worst case scenario."
The fear is that wild geese moving from western China to Siberia may have spread the virus to several species of ducks and gulls that briefly visit British shores on their annual migration north. These ducks, many of which may not show signs of illness, may be passing on the virus to poultry on British farms.
In the hope that they are not, Defra and the Wildfowl and Wetland announced last week that they would be conducting tests on 11,000 wild birds—three times the normal level. "The risk of avian in-fluen-za spreading from eastern Russia to the UK via migrating birds is still low," said Defra’s chief vet, Debby Reynolds. "However, we have said all along that we must remain on the look out."
What is, according to Neil Ferguson, the possible risk of bird flu if one gets infected?
选项
A、Anyone’s infection will trigger pandemic though it is probably one in ten thousand.
B、Each time a person gets infected with the virus will cause an enormous pandemic bird-flu.
C、The person infected with the virus will do great harm to people around him.
D、It is impossible that the virus infection of a certain persons will cause a national bird virus spreading.
答案
D
解析
细节题。本题的解题点在第三段。文章提到“‘Every time a new person gets infected with the virusthere is a small chance that person will trigger a pandemic,’said Neil Ferguson…”可见Neil Ferguson认为,即使有人感染了这种病毒,也不会使此疾病大规模流行。四个选项中A、B、C选项均表达了会大规模流行的意思,所以不正确,只有D选项与文章的意思相符。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/TOQO777K
0
考博英语
相关试题推荐
TomorrowJapanandSouthKoreawillcelebrateWhiteDay,anannualeventwhenmenareexpectedtobuyagiftfortheadoredwome
TheUnitedNationsdeclaredlastFridaythatSomalia’sfamineisover.Buttheofficialdeclarationmeanslittletothemillions
Newresearchsuggestsgossipcouldactuallylower______andhelppeopleovercomethefrustrationofseeingsomeonedoingsomethin
______amatterofdisagreeingwiththetheoryofindependence______rejectingitsimplications:thattheromancesmaybetakenin
Fortyyearsagonoonewasconcernedaboutthehealthoftheocean,inspiteofthefactthatmanyfisherieswerebeingover-har
Oneroomschools,withallsubjectsbeingtaughttoallgradesatthesametime,simply______whenbettertransportationpermits
Nosingleelementhastantalizedandtormentedthehumanimaginationmorethantheshimmeringmetalknownbythechemicalsymbol
Themanagerjust______hisresignationtotheboardmeetingyesterdayandtodayanotheronetookhisplace.
Asadevelopingcountry,wemustkeep______withtherapiddevelopmentoftheworldeconomy.
Ifincomeistransferredfromrichpersonstopoorpersonstheproportioninwhichdifferentsortsofgoodsandservicesarepro
随机试题
最明显而固定的直肠横襞距肛门约
如果乙公司对外负债100余万元无力偿还,而该债务是在甲公司决策、指示下以乙公司的名义进行贸易造成的,甲公司对此债务的责任应如何判定?()如果王某代表丙公司作出一项投资决策,结果导致丙公司损失50余万元,该损失应由谁承担?()
设随机变量X与Y,则下列说法不正确的是()。
下列项目中,()不实行资本金制度。
关于建筑施工企业的安全生产教育培训制度,表述正确的是()。
国际商会将信用证分为()。
投保人不得为无民事行为能力人投保以死亡为给付保险金条件的人身保险,但法律规定的特殊情形除外。根据保险法律制度的规定,下列各项中,属于不受前款规定限制的特殊情形的是()。
电子邮件是Internet应用最广泛的服务项目,通常采用的传输协议是()。
劳动合同管理制度的内容包括()。
2006年8月8日下午5时,某村刮起8级大风。该村村民王某在回家途中,路经村委会在建的办公楼时,大风将用于建筑的脚手架刮倒。脚手架在倒塌过程中将一根电线砸断。电线正巧落在由此路过的王某身上,王某不幸触电身亡。王某的丈夫向法院起诉,要求村委会和供电公司对王某
最新回复
(
0
)