An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
Will the bird flu make its round of lethal killings in the Year of the Chicken?
China reports 192 H7N9 infections, 79 deaths in January
A total of 192 human H7N9 avian flu cases, including 79 fatalities, were reported in the Chinese mainland in January, the state health authority said on Tuesday.
According to National Health and Family Planning Commission, there was an increase in reports of H7N9 infections and deaths from the disease in January, up from 106 and 20 respectively in December 2016.
H7N9 is a bird flu strain first reported to have infected humans in China in March 2013. Infections usually occur in winter and spring.
South China's Guangdong Province said Tuesday that 21 people were infected with and 10 died from H7N9 in the province in January. Beijing also reported a human H7N9 case last week, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.
A number of provinces have rolled out measures to prevent the virus from spreading, with live poultry sales suspended in cities in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, Central China's Hunan Province, and East China's Zhejiang Provinces, Xinhua reported.
Influenza A virus subtype H7N9
The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified H7N9 as "...an unusually dangerous virus for humans."[11] Most of the cases resulted in severe respiratory illness, with a mortality rate of roughly 30 percent.[12] [13] Researchers have commented on the unusual prevalence of older males among H7N9-infected patients.[14] While several environmental, behavioral, and biological explanations for this pattern have been proposed,[15] the reason remains unknown.[16]
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