UPDATED 9/18/12: Sharon Sanders on FluTrackers has posted a notice from Egypt’s Undersecretary of Health stating that these three cases have tested negative.
# 6558
Overnight a number of Arabic-Language news reports have emerged from Egypt indicating that three brothers (ages 19,16, 9) from the village of Manshiet Galal are being tested for suspected `bird flu’.
Sharon Sanders at FluTrackers started a thread last night, with several of these news reports, and Laidback Al has produced a handy map of the location.
Meanwhile Crof, at Crofsblog, has prevailed upon an Arabic-speaking friend to translate one of the news reports – that increases its readability considerably over machine translations - which you’ll find at Egypt: Suspected H5N1 in three brothers.
We haven’t heard much out of Egypt this year, with the last confirmed H5N1 infection reported in early June (see WHO: Egypt Announces New H5N1 Case) – making Egypt’s 10th case of 2012.
Given the ongoing political and social turmoil in the Middle-East, it isn’t entirely clear how diligent surveillance and reporting on disease outbreaks like H5N1 are right now.
For now, these three cases reported today are just suspected cases, and it is often the case that suspected cases prove to have some other illness.
I’ll provide an update when we learn more.
