New bird flu: What the first 82 cases reveal
http://www.foxnews.com/health/...
By Rachael Rettner
Published April 25, 2013
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Other findings from the investigation of the 82 cases include:
-- H7N9 has a high death rate: About 21 percent of patients who fell ill with the virus died. That's a higher death rate than that of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which killed about 9.6 percent of those who contracted the virus between 2002 and 2003. However, the new bird flu is so far not as deadly as the H5N1 bird flu virus, which caused an outbreak in 2003 and 2004 and has a mortality rate of 60 percent.
-- It takes about four days to become very sick: The average time between onset of H7N9 flu symptoms and hospitalization was 4.5 days, the researchers said. That's longer than the time between the onset of symptoms and hospitalization for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which is about seven days, according to earlier studies.
-- Most patients are male: Seventy-three percent of these cases in the study were male. Patients ranged in age from 2 to 89, but 46 percent of cases occurred in people ages 65 and older.
-- No confirmed human-to-human transmission: Nearly all of the 82 cases were not connected, and they occurred across six regions of China. In two cases, health officials could not rule out the possibility that sick individuals caught the virus from family members. However, there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission.
More investigation is needed not only to identify patients who may be sick with the virus, but also to determine risk factors for becoming ill (some people may not get sick), the researchers said.
A ban on the sale of poultry in market stalls, disinfection of markets or market closures may need to be considered to prevent the spread of the virus from animals to people, the researchers said.
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