More H7 Infections in St Helens England
Recombinomics Commentary
June 7, 2007
The two people who live on the smallholding have been testing for the disease after exhibiting flu-like symptoms but results came back negative.
Animal Health is tracing movements and contacts.
Defra is working closely with the Health Protection Agency on all potential human health aspects.
The above comments described two more people infected with H7 avian influenza in St Helens. The announcement of H7 on their farm in St Helens does not give the N serotype, but some of the infected birds were bought at the same Chesire market linked to two positive human cases in St Helens as well as two positive human cases in Wales. Like the two cases above, the remaining 13 cases had bird flu symptoms, but tested negative. However, since the flu season is over in England, and the 13 patients had flu symptoms and links to the H7N2 patients in Wales, they were considered positive and either they or contacts were treated with Tamiflu.
The two recent cases raises the number of cases in St Helens to four. Which are in addition to the 15 cases in Wales.
The viral test failures should be followed with H7 antibody testing of contacts. Such testing will likely identify many additional positives, because H7 is readily transmitted human-to-human, official press releases not withstanding.
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