A Curious report from China

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/2006/04/04/asia_birdflu/

To date, any news we have gotten out of China has fallen into two categories.

1. Highly scrubbed and sanitized `official' reports
2. Speculation and propaganda issued by dissidents

That said, the outbreak of a `mysterious flu' at a university in the province of Hunan first made the news 4 or 5 days ago. Doctors were unable to identify the strain, but reported that 400+ patients had been admitted to the local hospital.

They then stated that nearly all had been released.

The fact that the patients had been released seemed to indicate this was nothing more than an outbreak of seasonal flu.

Now we learn that these patients were supposedly moved to an `unidentified quarantine area', and out of the hospital.

The problem is, the source in this article is listed as an `employee at University hospital #1' in Hunan. Is this an official? Or a disgruntled orderly?

The WHO is asking for more information. No word as to what is being said.

Another unnamed official from the University has stated:

“We have more than a dozen students with high fever symptoms,” the official said, after initially denying the story that was reported by the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua.

“Most of them are out of hospital already. We don’t know the details,” the official said.


What they define as `out of the hospital' now comes into question.

This is probably just an outbreak of seasonal flu. But if this is the level of transparancy we can expect from the Chinese officials, Lord help us if an H5N1 pandemic erupts over there.