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# 8138
In what is getting to be a daily occurrence, mainland officials have notified Hong Kong of their 6th H7N9 case over the past 5 days, this time involving a 54-year old woman from Jiangsu Province. This also marks the 4th province to report a human infection since the start of the New Year (others are Zhejiang, Guangdong and Shanghai), suggesting the virus remains widespread across much of Eastern China.
First the notification announcement from Hong Kong’s CHP, after which I’ll be back with a little more.
8 January 2014
NHFPC notifies additional human case of avian influenza A(H7N9) in Jiangsu
The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health (DH) received notification today (January 8) from the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) of an additional human case of avian influenza A(H7N9) in Jiangsu affecting a woman aged 54.
The patient, who lives in Nanjing, was admitted to a local hospital for treatment. Her specimen tested positive for the avian influenza A(H7N9) virus by the relevant health authority of Jiangsu Province last night.
To date, a total of 151 human cases of avian influenza A(H7N9) have been confirmed on the Mainland. They are in Zhejiang (52 cases), Shanghai (34 cases), Jiangsu (29 cases), Guangdong (10 cases), Jiangxi (six cases), Fujian (five cases), Anhui (four cases), Henan (four cases), Beijing (two cases), Hunan (two cases), Shandong (two cases) and Hebei (one case).
The CHP will follow up with the Mainland health authorities for more case details.
"Locally, enhanced disease surveillance, port health measures and health education against avian influenza are ongoing. We will remain vigilant and maintain liaison with the World Health Organization (WHO) and relevant health authorities. Local surveillance activities will be modified upon the WHO's recommendations," a spokesman for the DH said.
This increase in H7N9 cases in China was widely predicted once colder temperatures returned this winter (see last September’s Chinese CDC: Be Alert For H7N9), and the bigger surprise would have been its failure to return. We should not be surprised to see a steady stream of such reports over the next couple of months.
Hong Kong, which was severely impacted by the SARS outbreak in 2003 (see SARS And Remembrance), has beefed up border checkpoints, increased testing and surveillance, and engaged in extensive public health messaging regarding the H7N9 virus threat, with reminders posted in shop windows, on billboards, and on the sides of buses across the city.
While there has been no indication of sustained human-to-human spread of this virus, and live healthy-looking market birds are considered the prime suspects in spreading the virus - there are still many unanswered questions regarding how it is ultimately jumping to humans.
Questions that include which animal reservoirs are spreading the virus, the incidence of mild or asymptomatic (hence, unidentified) infections in the human population, and how much of a pandemic threat this virus really poses.
While this virus appears more easily transmitted to humans from its animal source than other avian flu viruses we’ve followed (H5N1, H7N9, H9N2), thus far it hasn’t adapted well enough to human physiology to spread efficiently once it makes that initial jump.
And perhaps it never will.
But each new human infection gives the virus another opportunity to `figure us out’, and so we watch these sporadic cases carefully, looking for any signs that the behavior of this virus has changed.
