Schi-Tech Today reports on an emergent strain of bird flu that has been infecting people in eastern China:
A new strain of bird flu has been infecting people in parts of China since February 2013.
Image credit: Simon Howden on freedigitalphotos.net
Scientists in China have identified an influenza virus that they say has the potential to spread around the world, sickening and killing people whose immune systems have never faced a threat like it.
The H7N9 flu emerged in humans in eastern China in February 2013, sickening 133 people and killing about a third of them before winding down in May. It seemed that the outbreak was over, but it reemerged in October 2013 and has been spreading steadily since.
“H7N9 viruses should be considered as a major candidate to emerge as a pandemic strain in humans,” they wrote in a study published Wednesday by the journal Nature.
According to the World Health Organization, 571 people have had laboratory-confirmed H7N9 infections and 212 people have died. All but three cases were in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The others involved a Chinese traveler to Malaysia and two Canadians who had visited China.
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