Two More Confirmed H5N1 Cases in the Nile Delta
Recombinomics Commentary 18:31
December 27, 2007
Two Egyptians have tested positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, a day after an Egyptian woman died of the disease, Egypt's health ministry said on Thursday.
"There are two cases today, one in Damietta and one in Menoufia... Today lab results confirmed that they are infected with bird flu," Amr Kandeel, head of communicable disease control at the health ministry, told Reuters.
The two new cases, both of whom are currently receiving treatment in hospital, bring the total number of human bird flu cases in Egypt to 41, Kandeel added.
State news agency MENA said the Menoufia case was 22-year-old Nora Aboul Abbas Mohamed, but gave no details for the second case.
On Wednesday, 25-year-old Ola Younis died of bird flu in Beni Suef province, south of Cairo, on the same day she was diagnosed as being infected with the highly pathogenic virus.
The above comments describe two more confirmed H5N1 in Egypt. Both cases are in the Nile Delta, where recent H5N1 outbreaks were described (see satellite map). Three confirmed H5N1 cases in two days are cause for concern.
Sequence data on these cases are important. The recent cluster in Pakistan raise concerns that a more transmissible version of H5N1 is migrating into the region. In the past sequences from Egypt were readily distinguishable from sequences in Afghanistan and India, which were related to the Uva Lake starin. However, the Uva Lake was in Kuwait earlier this year and is widespread in Europe, signaling a possible movement into Egypt. Egypt has already issued an alert and readied a Tamiflu blanket for the region.
Sequence data on the cases in Egypt and Pakistan would be useful.
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