It's Back (and Never Really Went Away): New H7N9 Case Reported

Nimo Wanjau | Jul 22, 2013 7:00 pm | 2 comments | 1986 reads

It has been about a month since we have heard of any new cases of H7N9, now a 61-year-old woman from Hebei province is the latest one. The woman is at the Beijing Chaoyang Hospital in critical condition.

China Daily story on the new case:

A 61-year-old woman from Langfang, Hebei province, is in critical condition after being infected with the H7N9 virus, the latest known case of bird flu on the mainland.

The patient apparently visited a food market where live poultry was sold every day between June 30 and July 9, the Beijing Health Bureau said.

A study published earlier this month showed that the elderly are most likely to get infected.

Most of those infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus have been older people with pre-existing medical problems, putting them at greater risk of getting critically ill or dying, according to China's first comprehensive study of the new virus.

The analysis was led by scientists from Fudan University and was published in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

And in more alarming news, researchers have discovered that H7N9 is "highly transmissible through the air":

A new bird flu virus that has infected 132 people in recent months and killed 43 is capable of spreading from mammal to mammal through the air, a study by a team of Chinese virologists has found, rekindling fears that the virus could eventually pass from person to person. The study, published online Thursday by the journal Science, found that one strain of the H7N9 virus isolated from a human subject in eastern China’s Anhui province was “highly transmissible” between ferrets by respiratory droplets, according to a summary posted to Science’s website.

Winter is coming and it's going to be a long one.

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