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Commentary
Gaungdong H7N9 Export With Guangxi Onward
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Recombinomics Commentary 22:00
February 6, 2014
Health officials are still determining how the boy became infected but said he had been in close contact with his mother, 41.
She began to feel unwell late last month after visiting Zhongshan in Guangdong province. She returned to Nanning on January 28.
The boy remained in a stable condition but his mother’s condition was critical.
The above comments describe an H7N9 familial cluster in Hengxian county, Guangxi, which represents onward transmission of H7N9 bird flu exported from Zhongshan, Guangdong. Although the Guangxi MoH did note that the mother developed symptoms while in Zhongshan, the report on H7N9 confirmation in her son failed to note that the relationship between the two PCR confirmed cases.
CORRECTION - Guangxi MoH report on son acknowledged relationship with mother
Although WHO has not reported either case, they did describe a similar family cluster in Zhongshan (father, 37M and daughter, 2F in Sanjiaozhen), and failed to note that the confirmed child was the daughter of a confirmed case.
The Guangxi cluster represents the first reported example of H7N9 export coupled with onward transmission, and the export from Zhongshan represents the first example of the H7N9 linkage between an area with one H2H familial cluster (Zhongshan, Guangdong) to another area (Hengxian, Guangxi) with another H2H familial cluster.
These important developments were withheld by the Guangdong MoH, Guangxi MoH, and WHO by the concealing of the relationships in the two familial clusters.
The glaring lack of transparency by the agencies reporting H7N9 confirmed cases while hiding H7N9 clusters is cause for many serious concerns.
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