H5N1 Fatality in Egypt
Recombinomics Commentary
December 26, 2007
An Egyptian woman has died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the 16th person to succumb to the virus in Egypt, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
Oula Yunes Ali, 25, died on Tuesday after being admitted to hospital on Friday with a high fever, ministry spokesman Abdel Rahmane Shahin said
The above comments describe the first H5N1 case this season in Egypt. New cases in Egypt were not unexpected. H5N1 was recently confirmed in multiple governorates in the Nile Delta, including roof-top holdings in Giza.
Egypt has submitted OIE reports on 922 outbreaks (see satellite maps here here here here here), and have had the largest number of confirmed cases outside of Egypt.
Birds migrate through Egypt at this type, and the Gharbiya cluster was confirmed almost exactly one year ago.
Moreover, Egypt had just issued an alert, signaling a failure of the vaccination program, and they began dispensing Tamiflu to hospitals and clinics in the Nile Delta.
There is an extensive database of human and bird H5N1 sequences from Egypt, which a number of regional markers. However, this season the Uva Lake strain of H5N1 is widespread in Europe and the Middle East, so the sequences from this season in Egypt would be of interest.
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