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Commentary
WHO Threatens
H7N9
Reporting Delays
Recombinomics
Commentary 13:00
April 12, 2013
A 70-year-old man from Jiangsu who became ill on 29 March 2013,
A 74-year-old man from Jiangsu who became ill on 2 April 2013,
A 65-year-old man from Zhejiang who became ill on 3 April 2013,
A 76-year-old woman from Shanghai who became ill on 1 April 2013,
An 81-year-old woman from Shanghai who became ill on 4 April 2013,
A 74-year-old man from Shanghai who became ill on 31 March 2013 and died on 11 April 2013,
An 83-year-old woman from Shanghai who became ill on 2 April 2013,
A 68-year-old man from Shanghai who became ill on 4 April 2013,
A 31-year-old man from Jiangsu who became ill on 31 March 2013, and
A 56-year-old man from Jiangsu who became ill on 3 April 2013.
To date, a total of 38 patients have been laboratory confirmed with influenza A(H7N9) virus in China; including 10 deaths, 19 severe cases and nine mild cases.
If the current pattern of sporadic infections continues, WHO will cease frequent reporting of case numbers, and focus its Disease Outbreak News on new developments or changes in the pattern or presentation of infections.
The above comments are from the April 11 WHO update on confirmed H7N9 cases. These reports have been lagging media reports by two days, and WHO twitter updates by one day. The above reports eliminate those time gaps and represent the current status.
The final statement suggests the daily updates will cease. Today there have not been any media reports on new cases, suggesting that the daily reports will halt or be delayed from all sources.
Although WHO continues to call these cases “sporadic”, they have yet to identify an animal source. Cases are widespread and are being confirmed at a rate significantly higher than H5N1 bird flu (see map).
Poultry isolates are closely related to the human sequences, but lack PB2 E627K. Recent papers in the New England Journal of Medicine and Eurosurveillance cite the receptor binding domain change, Q226L, the abolition of the glycosylation site at H7 position 158, and the presence of E627K in all human PB2 sequences, raising serious concerns of human adaption that is independent of poultry.
Reporting delays at this time would be hazardous to the world’s health.
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