Another Bird Flu Case in Thai Binh Vietnam
Recombinomics Commentary
February 27, 2005
>> A 36-year-old man has been infected with bird flu in northern Vietnam, a newspaper said on Sunday, reporting the second confirmed case in the area inside a week of a disease that has killed 13 people in the latest outbreak in the country.
State-run Saigon Giai Phong newspaper said the man had been taken to a Hanoi hospital from the province of Thai Binh and tests had confirmed on Saturday that he had the highly contagious H5N1 poultry virus that has killed 46 people in Asia.
Doctors at the hospital could not be reached for comment. <<
The number of H5N1 bird flu cases in Thai Binh continues to grow. In the past few days there have been four cases (14F, 21M, 36M, 69M) and none have clear ties to poultry. Similarly, there were clusters linked to Thai Binh last month and last year.
The bimodal distribution of onset dates in familial clusters strongly implicates human-to-human transmission among family members.
The geographical clusters in Thai Binh strongly implicate infections via casual contact, which would create a very serious cause for concern.
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