H7N9 appears in a new north eastern Chinese province: Jilin

Click on image to enlarge....and the map expands a little more. It would be interesting to know if this case was acquired from a live poultry market stocked with birds sourced within the province or from the vast network of poultry movement that links the provinces and their markets across thousands...

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H7N9 deaths jump significantly....

Click on image to enlarge.Twitter was buzzing this morning with news that several sources had announced a new total number of deaths in human cases of H7N9 infection.It was not a total surprise that there were more deaths than we had heard about, and that is for several reasons:In Wave...

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H7N9 snapdate: epidemic curve as Wave 2 looks to be ending...

Click on image to enlarge.This image is another way of showing that the current wave of human cases of avian influenza A(H7N9) virus is ending and that we are solidly within a period of "tailing" (cases only ticking over at low levels in the lead-in or lead-out of the main peak).BUT: These data...

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Allergy and viral infection: wheeze and more wheeze

I really liked this Letter by Karta and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin. Not just because it makes some sense to me but because it's not a long drawn-out immunology study written in alphabet soup with multiple 12-panel figures that make me cry.Trying to understand how viruses (my thing)...

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Wheezing after respiratory virus infection...

Takeyama and colleagues from Japan delved into the viruses present among young children (= 3-years of age) hospitalized with a clinically defined lower respiratory tract infection.This exemplifies what many such studies do; sample from the upper respiratory tract to find signs of replicating virus in order to study a disease of the lower respiratory tract. It's...

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Humans unlikely to infect poultry with H7N9? Data please!

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said that poultry is not at risk of being infected by humans carrying H7N9 virus.In fact, we have no evidence that affected people could transmit the virus to other species, including birds. The highest risk of virus introduction is uncontrolled live poultry trade between affected and unaffected areas.But absence of...

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Why I think the 2nd wave of human influenza A(H7N9) virus infections has broken...

If you look at the chart above, it shows declining:Average cases per day (blue data points) in 2014Less noticeable but consistently declining average cases per day when calculated across all of Wave 2 (oranges data points)And importantly, a drastic decline in the number of new cases...

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I care what the H7N9 numbers are...

Who cares what the #H7N9 numbers are? http://t.co/P1Utc4HFr4� Crawford Kilian (@Crof) February 17, 2014This was the Tweet from Crawford Kilian (hereafter "Crof") a couple of days ago. I respect Crof. He has been as much of a mentor in my year doing this as has anyone. He even sent me his book on "Writing for the Web". I immediately changed a few things that I did after reading parts of it. Unfortunately...

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H7N9 human case #1 - 1-year ago...

A year ago, on the 18-Feb-2013, the first human case of avian influenza A(H7N9) virus infection started showing signs of an illness; coughing with sputum. That person was an 87-year old retired male with hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). By the time he presented a week later he had fever and shortness of breath. He sadly died of acute respiratory...

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Collaboration in Pediatric Medical Education and Clinical Care in Mbarara, Uganda

I walk into the admissions room for the �Toto� Pediatric Ward at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda and the intern on-call looks up at me with an anxious smile.  In this room there is a small bench, where two mothers sit with their toddlers, prostrate on their laps, one tachypneic, the...

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Shanghai and Hangzhou to permanently stop live poultry markets.

According to the report on CNTV.com ENLGLISH linked below, the poultry industry in Shanghai and Hangzhou (the capital of Zhejiang province) is about to change significantly (h/t Crawford Kilian's H5N1 blog post and Tweet on this).A new plan for the use of processed poultry in place of live or freshly butchered birds will be rolled out in late February.Brilliant...

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H7N9 snapdate: latest hotzone map

Avian influenza A(H7N9) virus human cases by region of acquisition.Click on image to enlar...

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Looking at the age and sex difference between H7N9 Wave 1 and Wave 2...

Thanks to CIDRAP's Dr. Nicholas Kelley for asking the question of whether I'd looked at the epidemiology of the H7N9-related deaths between Waves 1 and 2.So that led to the charts below.Click on image to enlarge.Only laboratory confirmed cases and the fatal cases with enough data to identify them are...

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