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Commentary
Pennsylvania trH3N2 Testing Symptomatic Fair
Attendees
Recombinomics Commentary
12:50
September 3, 2011
State health officials are conducting exposure investigations in Schuylkill and Washington counties among people who attended an agricultural fair.
The most recent case reported appeared in a 2-year-old Schuylkill County girl who attended the fair and had contact with pigs. She became sick on Aug. 20 with a high fever, dry cough and lethargy. She tested positive for Type-A flu at a local hospital emergency room, but was not admitted.
The above comments provide detail on the Pennsylvania investigation of symptomatic agricultural fair attendees. The dates and location described above match the Washington County Agricultural Fair of August 12 – 20, 2011. Flu symptoms in August in southwestern Pennsylvania are uncommon, which is why trH3N2 cases are frequently identified in August in symptomatic fair attendees, like the Huron County fair in Ohio in August, 2007 where a hog exhibitor (10F) and her father (36M) developed symptoms and trH1N1 was isolated (A/Ohio/01/2007 and A/Ohio/02/2007) and two dozen attendees had flu-like symptoms. The internal genes of the recent trH3N2 cases are closely related to the internal genes in the above isolates.
However, the above case (2F) from Schuykill Country who apparently attended a fair in Washington County was infected with trH3N2 with a pandemic H1N1 MP gene segment as seen in A/Indiana/08/2011 isolated from the case (1M) in Indiana.
The matching of these two isolates couple with symptomatic fair attendees raises pandemic concerns.
Details on the number of symptomatic attendees under investigation would be useful.
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