As part of my crippled USS Vengeance-like crash course into the workings of influenza viruses over the past nearly 6 weeks, I've been doing some reading. A Science Policy Forum article I'm skimming through tonight, from Lipsitch and colleagues in 2012, makes a nice comment: We contend that predictions about how particular influenza strains will behave in humans or, even more important, how...
H7N9 more transmissible than H5N1.
A comment in BMJ by Jane Parry stresses the use of closing live bird markets (LBMs)to halt human H7N9 cases and adds that this virus is more transmissible to/between humans than is H5N1 (45 human cases confirmed in China since 2001 vs H7N9's 132 but in only 5 weeks). I wonder how related this is to H7N9 being a low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) in birds compared to H5N1's highly pathogenic...
Fujian market H7N9 positive.
Sampling of the environment in a Fujian market yielded another positive. There are now 52 such samples positive according to the Ministry of Agricult...
Market networks.
A study by Fourni� in PNAS and colleagues looks at risk and H5N1 and live bird markets (LBMs) in North Vietnam. Such sites implicated in H7N9's diverse and rapid spread in South East China, notes the interconnectivity between markets using social network analysis. Some act as hubs, spreading poultry to others. Infection in a hub will more effectively spread virus to outlying nodes. A similar,...
Haemodialysis to blame in MERS-CoV spread?
A translated article suggests that hospital infection control broke down and may be a factor in transmissi...
Le MERS-CoV arrives in France.
A French citizen has been isolated in an intensive care unit somewhere in Paris after returning to France from the United Arab Emirates. The health website of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (Le site sant� di Minist�re des Affaires sociales et de la Sant�) cites the National Reference Center at the Institute Pasteur as having confirmed the MERS-CoV (HCoV-EMC) case. This is not...
Losing control of the numbers?
That's how it was described to me by my esteemed colleague, the Editor in Chief of FluTrackers. For the past 5 week we've had fairly detailed data coming out of China about avian influenza A(H7N9) cases; dates, places, names, deaths, discharges., All these placed into the public domain and not just reported to Health officials through less public channels. Sure, I've griped about a missing...
The crowded virus escapes from Hofuf?
While MERS-CoV (f. HCoV-EMC) cases have been detected in the UK (3-2 fatal), Jordan (2-both fatal), the United Arab Emirates (1, fatal) and Qatar (2) since April 2012, it has been the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (22 cases-13 fatal) that is the current hot zone. These cases are from 5 different clusters according to the FluTrackers. The latest news paints a bleak picture. According to the Wall...
It's an nHCoV, its an EMC...no...its MERS?
It was an unusual move that apparently required "a great deal of effort to find a name that all parties involved could agree on". Avian Flu Diary reports on a ScienceInsider article noting that the Coronavirus Study Group will propose an entirely new name for the latest human coronavirus type that seems to cause respiratory disease in humans and belongs to a new coronavirus species. Usually...
H7N9 evolution: new graphic.
Based on the Liu et al. Lancet paper, this new graphic shows a possible series of evolutionary steps leading to the human-infecting influenza A(H7N9) vir...
H7N9 reaches high viral loads.
Large amounts of viral RNA were detected in 2 sputa and 1 throat swab collected from the imported Taiwan cases according to a recent Lancet letter. While early throat swabs (days after fever onset)and a chest X-ray did not indicate H7N9 infection, later in the disease course (11-13-days after onset of his 3-day fever) signs and virus became more clearly detectable. This case may suggest...
H7N9 deaths jump - details dry up.
H7N9-associated deaths now listed at being at 31 (last count 25-26). Details for 6 cases are limited but appear to have come from Anhui (1), Zhejiang (1) and Jiangsu (4). A new 9M case, apparently mild (fever, fatigue, diarrhoea), also reported in Fujian province - he's already discharged - found positive "retrospectively". Two items of interest here: (1) The delay in detecting the virus may...
Speaking of things we know little about...HCoV
HCoV-EMC cases have risen by three to a total of 30 (FluTrackers are running a nice tally). The latest severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) cases occur in Al-Ahsa and comprise a cluster of 13 cases. This is becoming a rapidly developing situation given that 18 cases have died overall. The spectre of underlying disease lurks here as it does with H7N9 but the evidence for human-to-human...
Prof Peiris posits poultry progressing problem.
Esteemed virologist Professor Malik Peiris believes the drop in H7N9 cases linked to the shutdown in wet markets, underscores the impact of the large, fast-moving and diverse poultry trade in the south east of China. Wet markets have closed in all affected areas and cases have subsequently dropped. Prof Peiris noted that a study of human blood samples is underway. This will shed light on...
H7N9 risk for Canada's animals is negligible to very low.
Canadian Food Inspection Agency is not overly concerned that Canadian animals are at risk of intermingling with contaminated bird speci...
Anger over anti-vaccination comment.
The entirely confusingly named Australian Vaccination Network (next month they will face a court battle to retain their misleading name), actually a cabal of anti-vaccination advocates, has encouraged parents to avoid vaccinating their children and do not rely on your GP's opinion. You know, those experts in community ills who often have there own children and have trained and worked for over a decade...
H7N9 outbreak Week 6 begins.
We start week 6 of the H7N9 outbreak with confirmation...or new test results....that H7N9 (not some other H7) is indeed among the poultry in Guangdong province, which is adjacent to Hong Kong. One sample was positive from s wholesale market in the city of Dongguan, which had previously (see post on 28.04) been positive for an H7 virus that was not H7N9.Previous testing of 542 poultry workers...
H7N9 Weekly wrap-up. Bird flu, what bird flu?
We finished Week 5 with astonishingly few new notifications and a lot more difficulty finding key dates for hospitalization, death and discharge. For example, a 55-year old male named Jiao from Hunan province has been variously cited as being the 25th or 27th death associated with H7N9. No-one seems to have a name for the 26th death. Just 1 disease onset and 2 deaths deaths during that period (see...
Practicing Neurology in Tumbes, Peru
Shibani Mukerji, MD/PhDNeurology Resident, PGY3Travel Grant: Infectious and Cardiovascular diseases in PeruGreetings from Tumbes, Peru!Colored by child with schizencephaly Tumbes is a small city that sits near the border of Peru and Ecuador. It is a town of approximately 200,000 people...
