# 344
Things are rarely clear when filtered through the foreign media from half a world away. Machine translations are awkward, often almost unintelligible, and the patient details are often blurred. And so, almost three weeks into the Indonesian outbreak, it is hard to know if things are winding down or not. What evidence there is, is neither complete, nor compelling
In little more than two weeks, officially, there have been 6 positive cases of human H5N1 infection in Indonesia, resulting in 5 deaths.
Based on translated local news reports, scores of `suspected’ cases have been hospitalized, and dozens eventually tested, cleared, and released. Additionally, two other `suspected’ cases have died, and no test results have been publicly released. There remain roughly 3-dozen `suspected’ cases hospitalized, with no diagnosis.
There appears to be no central clearing house, no single source of information on suspected, or pending cases. Instead, it would appear that it is up to each individual hospital to release information about suspected cases. Reporters have staked out the biggest hospitals in places like Jakarta, Bandung, and Garut; but we really don’t know what is going on (if anything) in many smaller hospitals around the country.
The Jakarta Post continues to report daily on new cases entering hospitals around the country, as in this report today.
Three more suspected bird flu patients admitted to hospitals
Suherdjoko and Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post, Semarang, Makassar
Two suspected bird flu patients have been admitted to Kariadi Hospital in Semarang, Central Java, and another one to Wahidin Sudirohusodo Hospital in Makassar, South Sulawesi.
The two Semarang patients -- Mustofa, 51, and Suripah, 26 -- have been treated in the hospital's intensive care unit since Sunday, after coming down with symptoms similar to those of bird flu.
Mustofa's daughter, Siti Fatimah, said Monday her father had suffered from high fever with respiratory difficulties since Jan. 18. "Due to the illness in his throat, he could not speak. I wasn't sure whether his disease had something to do with bird flu. We just got scared after we found out many fowls in our village had died suddenly for unclear reasons," Siti said.
"Because of our fear we brought our father here Sunday. The hospital still has not given us any information about the cause of my father's illness," she said. She added that her neighbors raised a lot of poultry in their backyards.
<snip>
The Makassar patient is a 22-month-old baby named Putri. She was admitted to the hospital Saturday with a high fever and difficulty breathing.
Newshounds on the Internet, however, have detected at least 7 new patients today from local media reports, mostly from TV news outlets. Given the rapid news cycle of televised news, it is not surprising that the numbers are ahead of the newspapers. How many (if any) of these new cases will end up having the H5N1 virus remains to be seen.
Despite these new suspected cases, we haven’t seen any major increase in deaths, and given the CFR (Case Fatality Ratio) of the avian flu virus to date, one would expect that if a large number of the patients on the suspect list were infected with the H5N1 virus. The relatively large number of `undiagnosed' suspected cases remaining in the hospital, some after a week or longer, is curious however.
So, for now at least, while scattered new cases continue to show up on the radar screen, there doesn’t appear to be any noticeable escalation of this outbreak.
