H5N1 Confirmed Fatality in Jiangsu China
Recombinomics Commentary
December 2, 2007
A man in east China died of bird flu Sunday, the country's 17th fatality from the H5N1 virus, state media reported.
The man, surnamed Lu, had no contact with dead poultry, the Jiangsu health department said, according to Xinhua. Jiangsu also had no outbreaks of bird flu, the agency said, citing the provincial animal husbandry bureau.
A UN and World Bank report last week warned that the world remained unprepared to cope with a human pandemic arising from bird flu.
The original source of the virus is thought to have been wild migratory birds.
The above comments describe a new confirmed H5N1 fatality in China. The lack of a poultry link is cause for concern. Wild bird migrations at this time of the year have been linked to outbreaks to the west of China in Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, England, Romania, and Poland. To the south there have been new outbreaks in Bangladesh, Mayanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.
In the north, only H7N8 has been reported in South Korea, but wild birds from Mongolia arrive in the area at this time of the year, and those birds may be linked to the fatality in China.
The widespread reports of H5N1 at this time of the year suggest that human and poultry cases may be higher than those reported last season.
Sequence data on the latest case in China would be useful.
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