Bird flu strain spreads to central China cities
Source: Agencies/Shanghai Daily |
April 15, 2013, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
Two people in central Henan Province have been infected by the new strain of bid flu, the first cases found in the region, while China's death toll has risen to 13 from a total of 60 infections after two patients died in Shanghai.
One of the Henan victims, a 34-year old man in the city of Kaifeng, is critically ill in hospital, while the other, a 65-year old farmer from Zhoukou, is stable. The cases do not appear to be connected, health officials said.
Meanwhile, another four cases were confirmed in eastern Zhejiang Province, three in Shanghai and two in neighboring Jiangsu Province.
Nine of the 11 new patients are male, with seven of them in their sixties and seventies.
Three cases have now been reported outside the original clusters in eastern China, including one in Beijing, but there is nothing out of the ordinary so far, the China representative of the World Health Organization said.
"There's no way to predict how it will spread but it's not surprising if we have new cases in different places like we do in Beijing," Michael O'Leary told reporters.
On Saturday, the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that a seven-year-old child in the capital had been infected by the H7N9 virus, the first case reported outside the Yangtze river delta region in east China, where the new strain emerged last month.
The child's parents work in the poultry trade.
Investigators are trying to ascertain the source of the virus amid fears that it could cause a deadly pandemic similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, which killed about one in 10 of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.
China has been anxious to avoid a repeat of the panic of 2003 by promising total transparency, and O'Leary said his organization has been "very pleased" about the way information was being shared.
China's health ministry has said there is still no indication of human-to-human transmission.
"That's a key factor in this situation," said O'Leary. "As far as we know, all the cases are individually infected in a sporadic and not connected way."
The husband of an H7N9 victim in Shanghai was recently infected, but O'Leary said there was no cause for alarm.
"If there are only very rare cases ... that's different from the ease of transmission from person to person. It's that ease of transmission that we are concerned about, and there's no evidence of that yet," he said.
Health authorities say they do not know exactly how the virus is spreading, but it is believed to be crossing from birds to humans, prompting mass culls in several cities.
Beijing has followed Shanghai in halting poultry trading, China National Radio reported.
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has said H7N9 shows "affinity" to humans while causing "very mild or no disease" in infected poultry, making it more difficult to find the source of transmission.
China has said it expects to have a vaccine in seven months.
One of the Henan victims, a 34-year old man in the city of Kaifeng, is critically ill in hospital, while the other, a 65-year old farmer from Zhoukou, is stable. The cases do not appear to be connected, health officials said.
Meanwhile, another four cases were confirmed in eastern Zhejiang Province, three in Shanghai and two in neighboring Jiangsu Province.
Nine of the 11 new patients are male, with seven of them in their sixties and seventies.
Three cases have now been reported outside the original clusters in eastern China, including one in Beijing, but there is nothing out of the ordinary so far, the China representative of the World Health Organization said.
"There's no way to predict how it will spread but it's not surprising if we have new cases in different places like we do in Beijing," Michael O'Leary told reporters.
On Saturday, the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that a seven-year-old child in the capital had been infected by the H7N9 virus, the first case reported outside the Yangtze river delta region in east China, where the new strain emerged last month.
The child's parents work in the poultry trade.
Investigators are trying to ascertain the source of the virus amid fears that it could cause a deadly pandemic similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, which killed about one in 10 of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.
China has been anxious to avoid a repeat of the panic of 2003 by promising total transparency, and O'Leary said his organization has been "very pleased" about the way information was being shared.
China's health ministry has said there is still no indication of human-to-human transmission.
"That's a key factor in this situation," said O'Leary. "As far as we know, all the cases are individually infected in a sporadic and not connected way."
The husband of an H7N9 victim in Shanghai was recently infected, but O'Leary said there was no cause for alarm.
"If there are only very rare cases ... that's different from the ease of transmission from person to person. It's that ease of transmission that we are concerned about, and there's no evidence of that yet," he said.
Health authorities say they do not know exactly how the virus is spreading, but it is believed to be crossing from birds to humans, prompting mass culls in several cities.
Beijing has followed Shanghai in halting poultry trading, China National Radio reported.
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has said H7N9 shows "affinity" to humans while causing "very mild or no disease" in infected poultry, making it more difficult to find the source of transmission.
China has said it expects to have a vaccine in seven months.
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