No poultry contact in some Chinese bird flu cases : WHO

[redqueen]

(Reuters) - The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that a number of people who have tested positive for a new strain of bird flu in China appear to have had no contact with poultry, adding to the mystery about a virus that has killed 17 people to date.

Chinese authorities have slaughtered thousands of birds and closed some live poultry markets to try to slow the rate of human infection, but many questions remain unsolved, including whether the H7N9 strain is being transmitted between people.

WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl confirmed that "there are people who have no history of contact with poultry", after a top Chinese scientist was quoted as saying this applied to about 40 percent of those infected.

"This is one of the puzzles still (to) be solved and therefore argues for a wide investigation net," Hartl said in emailed comments.

...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/17/us-birdflu-china-idUSBRE93G04B20130417

And now they've found a human asymptomatic carrier as well.

[snagglepuss]

1. Not good news.

[redqueen]

2. Nope, and despite assertions that there would not be the same issues we saw with SARS...

The centre declined to comment on state media reports saying only 10 of the 77 cases known by Tuesday had had contact with poultry.

That's worrying. 82 cases so far.

[In_The_Wind]

3. " 4-year-old bird flu 'carrier' worries China"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022690168

[redqueen]

4. Yep, that is not good.

There is also a possibility that the virus could have jumped back into the wild bird population and could be infecting people that way.

[In_The_Wind]

8. I hate the thought of that.

http://ahd.maharashtra.gov.in/pdf/dis/Ranikhet%20Disease.pdf

I remember Deadly Harvest:

http://www.naturaleater.com/Testimonials/Steve-Gibson-SecurityNow-Extract.pdf

[d_r]

5. bad news.

if has crossed and is passing from people to people it will be on its way

[FarCenter]

6. It may indicate that the diagnosed cases and the fatalities are only a small fraction of the total

This might be good news, since it would indicate that a larger number of people are asymptomatic or only suffer from moderate illness which does not cause them to be hospitalized. In other words, we may be overestimating the mortality rate due to observational bias.

[redqueen]

7. I think I get what you're saying but ...

what would this mean? A virus which didn't cause illness before, and spread widely, then suddenly became a serious health risk?

[FarCenter]

9. It would mean that it would be more like other flu epidemics

If it is indeed spreading human to human and if it is only causing a fraction of those who get the virus to go to hospital, it would mean that:
- it will be impossible to contain and eradicate (which is unlikely anyway, since it spreads asymptomatically in birds), and
- the percent of people who get the flu and either require critical care or die is fairly small (and not the roughly 25% mortality rate that a comparison of early hospitalization cases to deaths would indicate).

[redqueen]

10. Based on the fact that they've only found one asymptomatic carrier

despite widespread testing in the most likely areas makes this an unrealistic scenario, but that would be nice.

[Avalux]

11. That's not good at all. An asymptomatic carrier has been identified too.

May not be as virulent as initially thoughts, we don't know yet. If it is transmitted from human-to-human, hope it can be contained.

[mother earth]

12. A new slant to add to today's rehash of deja vu terror. nt

[azurnoir]

13. geebus not good

[xchrom]

14. Du rec. Nt