Suspect H5N1 Fatality in Guangdong China
Recombinomics Commentary 07:34
February 25, 2008
A 44-year-old woman in south China's Guangdong Province was suspected to have bird flu, the provincial health department confirmed Monday.
The migrant female worker, surnamed Zhang, was found to have had contact with poultry died of illness and have had developed symptoms of fever and cough since February 16, the department said.
The patient was hospitalized last Friday in Haifeng County in Shanwei City.
The above comments describe a suspect H5N1 fatality in Shanwei City in Guangdong Province (see satellite map). This case follows the confirmed (41M) case in Guangxi earlier this month, and the confirmed (22M) case in Hunan. These three cases in the south follow a human to human cluster in northern China at the end of last year.
The cases in southern China are likely to be linked to clade 2.3 (Fujian strain), which is also the likely cause of the recent confirmed cases in northern Vietnam. All of the confirmed cases in southern China and northern Vietnam have been fatal. Suspect cases, as well as a 7 year old who has been described as confirmed in some media reports, have not been recently updated, but represent an addition concern with regard to milder, unreported cases.
Sequence data on the recent cases in China and Vietnam would be useful.
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