Suspected Bird Flu Patient received at Bandung Hospital
# 304
Normally, we get little or no news out of Indonesia between Friday (the Muslim Sabbath) and Monday. For flu centric newshounds, this is generally a dry period, and then the floodgates open up on Monday morning. This weekend, with the large number of suspected H5N1 cases in Jakarta and Bandung, has been a bit of an exception. At least until Saturday night, Indonesia time.
Since then, we’ve basically seen little new news come out of that region. Rehashes of earlier reports mostly, but little else. It is hard to know at this writing if nothing is really happening, or we are simply not hearing about it.
Two earlier media reports from MetroTVOnline appear to have been in error, or at least, have not been confirmed by any other media sources.
First, the report that Riyah’s husband has tested positive for the H5N1 virus. She died 3 days ago after testing positive, and her son (also testing positive) is in critical condition. Her husband is still hospitalized, but all other media sources that I’ve seen are reporting his tests have been negative.
False negative testing is a common problem with the bird flu virus, and given two members of his family have tested positive, and he is symptomatic, a series of negative tests may not be conclusive. He is receiving Tamiflu, and that can mask the virus. For now, he is a `suspected’ case.
Second, the report that Ani Afriani, was Riyah’s daughter hasn’t been confirmed. She died the day after Riyah, and tested positive. This news was released at the same time as the announcement about Riyah’s husband testing positive, which would have made 4 members of the same family positive for the virus.
There has been no further mention of any direct connection between Ani Afriani and Riyah in the press. Pending further information, I think we need to regard this tidbit as highly suspect.
As I’ve pointed out many times in the past, early reporting is often wrong. It’s the nature of the beast, and we are reliant upon quirky machine translations, and diligent reporting of the facts from half a world away.
The newshounds on the Internet are doing an incredible job searching for, translating, and interpreting these stories. It is a collaborative effort, which spans several flu forums and involves scores of researchers. Not only do they offer more detail than the mainstream media, they tend to get it `right’ more often, too.
There are new reports of additional suspected cases trickling in, such as this one from Bandung:
Metrotvnews.com, Bandung
The number of patients suspect bird flu in Bandung, West Java, continued to improve.(increase?)
On Saturday (13/1), a resident Cililin, the Bandung Regency, must undergo the intensive maintenance in the Handsome Sadikin Hospital, Bandung, because of experiencing the sign similar to bird flu.
Therefore, the number of patients suspect bird flu in RSHS reached six people, three including coming from one family. Iis Sugiyarti that was 18 years old entered RSHS, on Saturday around struck 21.00 WIB. the Resident of the Cimantar Village, Sindangkerta, of Cililin, that suffered breathless and the temperature of his body achieved 40 Celcius levels.By the midwife who examined him, Iis was reconciled to RSHS to get the further maintenance.
According to the side kelurga, for the last two days, dozens of chickens belonging to the family and the neighbour died suddenly. Several of the him in fact was stated positive bird flu.
(DEN)
A quirk in the translation software is that the word `improve’ generally can be assumed to mean `increase’. This story appears to tell us of another suspect case, admitted on Saturday.
While every human case of avian flu is a concern, we aren’t seeing huge numbers of people flocking to the hospitals.
And that is an encouraging sign.
