# 1267
Thanks to Crof of Crofsblog (who being on the West Coast stays up later than I), for capturing this story via the Strait Times on the test results of the widow of Muhamad Nabih. The link no longer worked for me, but we at least have the text of the article.
After 6 days of hospitalization with suspected bird flu symptoms, she has reportedly tested negative.
Remarkable that it has taken this long, when their 5 neighbors (who were rushed to the hospital with similar symptoms) were all cleared of having bird flu in less than 4 hours last weekend.
If you detect a hint of skepticism, it is not because I have inside information on this case. I don't.
I'm sure it's possible that a man could come down with H5N1, and die from it suddenly, and then 5 of his neighbors and 2 of his family members all come down with similar symptoms, and after hospitalization and receiving Tamiflu, all test negative for the disease.
But I do find it `curious'.
We see this pattern a lot. A confirmed case. More suspected cases. Tamiflu gets dispensed, and suddenly no one has the virus.
Theories abound.
- Perhaps the primers for the PCR testing are off, and some strains of the virus have `drifted' enough from the template as not to be easily detected.
- Tamiflu may be suppressing viral shedding enough so that once treated, victims no longer test positive. Detection of the virus has been difficult in the past, with some patients requiring repeated tests before a positive result is obtained. In some cases, only deep tissue testing done post mortem has turned up the virus.
- Or we may simply be seeing a lot of non-H5 related infections. Indonesia is rife with other pathogens that can mimic, at least in the early stages of infection, avian flu. Dengue fever, Chikungunya, and malaria are all fairly common. Go into any neighborhood in Indonesia, and it is likely that at any given time a certain percentage of the residents are suffering from some febrile illness.
I don't pretend to know which of the above scenarios is in play here. Perhaps none of them. Perhaps, to some extent, all of them.
That's the problem with trying to divine information from a country with a poor track record of transparency and openness. After months, indeed after years, of getting less than trustworthy information.
You don't know what to believe.
Via The Straits Times: Wife of Indonesian bird flu victim cleared. Excerpt:
A woman on the Indonesian island of Sumatra who was suspected of being infected with bird flu after her husband died of H5N1 has been cleared, a health ministry official said on Friday.
'The tests all came back negative,' Suharda Ningrum from the ministry's bird flu information centre told AFP.
The woman had been admitted to hospital after showing signs of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus but her condition had been improving.
Her husband was confirmed last weekend as being the 91st bird flu victim in Indonesia, which is the nation with the highest death toll from the virus.
