China’s Guangdong Province Confirms Bird-Flu Case; The Confirmation Raises Concerns That the Virus May Be Resurfacing
August 11, 2013 Leave a comment
August 10, 2013, 8:54 p.m. ET
China’s Guangdong Province Confirms Bird-Flu Case
The Confirmation Raises Concerns That the Virus May Be Resurfacing
HONG KONG—Southern China’s Guangdong province confirmed its first case of H7N9 bird flu on Saturday, rekindling concerns that the virus may be resurfacing and could spread to Hong Kong and elsewhere. Authorities in Guangdong said a 51-year-old woman surnamed Chen living in Boluo county, about 80 miles east of the capital Guangzhou, had contracted the disease. She is in critical condition after having been admitted to a hospital on Aug. 3 following signs of a fever.The H7N9 strain of bird flu was first confirmed to have jumped to humans in March, when Chinese state media reported that two people in Shanghai had died after succumbing to the virus. Since then, there have been 134 confirmed cases of the disease in mainland China—including the one in Guangdong—and 44 deaths, prompting officials to close poultry markets in various cities, which experts have said has helped halt its spread.
In July, just one case of H7N9 bird flu was diagnosed in mainland China. Virologists say that warmer weather may have helped curb transmission, but they caution that more cases may emerge as the weather turns colder.
Though several clusters of cases in families have been identified, authorities haven’t established that H7N9 can readily be transmitted from human to human, which would make the disease far more deadly. However, the World Health Organization has warned that the virus has more potential for such transmission than other known strains of bird flu.
According to Guangdong health authorities, the female patient had been exposed to poultry through her work at a market in Boluo. So far, none of the nearly 100 people who have been closely exposed to her appear to have contracted the virus.
Hong Kong authorities said they would continue to carefully monitor traffic at the border to try to contain spread of the virus. The border Guangdong shares with Hong Kong is the busiest boundary crossing in the world, with more than half a million people traveling in both directions each day.
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