Third Case Of Bird Flu Infection Reported In China In 3 Days
A 16-year-old boy in central Hunan province is badly ill after contracting the H5N1 birdflu virus, the third case reported by Chinese health authorities.
The teenage student entered a hospital in Hunan on January 16 and the province disease control center confirmed he was infected with the H5N1 virus, according to the Ministry of Health’s website.
The official statement said the boy’s condition is critical and that he previously had "contact with dead poultry," but it did not say where that contact happened.
After reporting two new cases over the weekend, China has warned of the risk of further human cases of bird flu in the run-up to the Lunar New Year holiday.
Before the current outbreaks, there had not been a single human infection reported in China in almost a year, but now four cases of the H5N1 virus have been confirmed in less than two weeks.
Two of the reported cases were fatal; one was a 27-year-old woman who died in eastern China on Saturday, and the other a 19-year-old woman who died in Beijing earlier this month.
A two-year-old girl was found ill on January 7 in Hunan and later diagnosed with bird flu at a hospital in her home province of Shanxi.
There have not been any reports of outbreaks of the virus among birds in Hunan since May 2007, Reuters reported.
The Agriculture Ministry said in a statement on its website: “As the Spring Festival approaches, there are frequent movements of poultry products and the risk rises of virus outbreaks and transmission.”
Next Monday marks the Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year holiday, which is celebrated by a mass movement of people back to their home provinces for lavish celebratory meals.
Concerns were expressed by Hong Kong’s top health official, York Chow, who called on China to release the results of epidemiological tests on the three previously reported cases.
"There are two main areas that we are concerned with. One is if there is no avian flu outbreak in poultry and yet there are human cases, whether there’s a change in the virus," Chow, Hong Kong’s secretary for food and health, told Reuters.
The possibility of “silently infected chickens” carrying the virus or transmitting the disease without showing outward birdflu-like symptoms was also among Chow’s chief concerns.
“WHO officials have been informed of the latest case and hope to get a better understanding of it in a meeting with Chinese health officials on Tuesday,” said Nyka Alexander, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization in Beijing.
The WHO said in a statement that during the holiday season, when people are more exposed to poultry as consumption rises, people are urged to maintain normal precautions against avian influenza, such as ensuring all poultry is well cooked and always washing hands after contact with raw meat.
Although the two-year-old girl was in stable condition at a hospital, state television reported on Monday that she is not yet out of danger, and added that nobody else she had been in contact with had shown signs of illness.
China has reported 34 human bird flu cases overall and at least 22 people have died.
There have, so far, been no other reported outbreaks of bird flu among poultry in the two provinces where the two-year-old patient had lived.
"The ministry has already asked Shanxi and Hunan provinces to … strengthen their bird flu prevention work," it said.
Experts have pointed to holes in surveillance of the virus in poultry in China since the newer cases came about unexpected, as the virus is more active during the cooler months between October and March.
Health experts say the H5N1 virus is mostly a disease among birds, but many fear it could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted among humans and spark an influenza pandemic that could kill millions of people worldwide.
China is seen as critical in the fight to contain bird flu because it is the world’s biggest poultry population and hundreds of millions of backyard birds run free.
WHO figures released in mid-December showed that since the H5N1 virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003, it has infected 391 people, killing 247 of them.
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