Nanjing bird flu cases contained
14/12/2007 17:48
Two cases of bird flu in humans involving family members in Nanjing,
Jiangsu Province, have been effectively contained, China's Ministry of Health
announced. It added all close contacts involved had been released from medical
observation.
"None of those in close contact showed unusual symptoms and they
were all released from medical observation on Dec. 12," the ministry said in a
statement posted at its Website (www.moh.gov.cn) yesterday.
China announced
on Dec. 2 that a 24-year-old man surnamed Lu in the provincial capital Nanjing
died of H5N1 infection. On Dec. 7, the man's father was also confirmed to be
infected with the virus.
Eighty-two people who had contact with either man
were put under close medical observation.
"The father, who has been under
intensive medical treatment, is in stable condition and showing signs of
improvement," the ministry said in the statement.
Neither men was said to
have known contact with sick or dead poultry and so far the source of the
infection remained unknown.
Mao Qun'an, spokesman of the Health Ministry,
said earlier that there were several possibilities for infection in the second
case, including close contact between the father and the son. It was also
possible that both men were either infected by the same source or separately by
different sources.
Joanna Brent, a Beijing-based the WHO spokeswoman, told
Xinhua that "there is no strong indication of human-to-human transmission. But
because this possibility cannot be ruled out, the WHO is monitoring this case
closely."
"If this (the second case) was proved to be a case of
human-to-human transmission, it seems likely that the transmission is
inefficient since, so far, there is just one confirmed case out of 83 close
contacts and the two cases were directly related, with no second-generation
transmission," she said.
She also said that at this stage a possible common
source has not been identified and based on preliminary laboratory results of
these two cases, the possibility of infection from two separate sources is least
likely.
Brent said that like most H5N1 cases in China, these cases were not
foreshadowed by a poultry outbreak reported to the Ministry of Agriculture.
"This suggests that strategies for monitoring H5N1 in poultry need further
strengthening," she said.
China's Ministry of Health said that local health
authorities had tightened monitoring of pneumonia cases over the past 10 days
and collected a large number of samples. "All samples tested (H5N1) negative and
no suspected or unusual cases were discovered, " it said.
The latest cases
bring the number of confirmed bird flu cases in humans in China to 27 since
2003. During that period, there have been 17 deaths.
Xinhua
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