WIKIMEDIA, A. DAVEYTwo people died last month in Shanghai and one person from the nearby Anhui Province was reported to be in critical condition with a new strain of bird flu. Yesterday (April 2), the Chinese government announced that four more people had been hospitalized with the virus in the Jiangsu Province.
The virus has been identified as H7N9, a bird flu virus that has previously not shown much propensity for attacking humans. Prior to the recent Chinese cases, only one person had been confirmed dead of the virus, a Dutch vet who contracted the infection in 2003 during an outbreak on a poultry farm, ScienceInsider reported.
The epidemiology behind the current cases remains unclear. The infected people show no clear connections with each other, and only one of the four newly announced victims appear to have worked with poultry, the Chinese government said—a slaughterer who could have caught the virus from a bird.
Chinese officials have examined people who came in contact with the three original victims in Shanghai but said they had found no other ...
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