China today reported one H7N9 case, in a 71-year-old man from Guangdong province who is hospitalized in critical condition, according to a provincial health ministry statement translated and posted by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
The man's illness bumps the overall number of H7N9 infections to 371. The unofficial number of deaths remains at 114.
Seven outbreaks of H5N1 avian flu among village flocks in seven separate provinces in northern and southern Vietnam have led to almost 20,000 new poultry deaths, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reported on Feb 22.
As cases continue, researchers find a mutation that might enhance disease severity.
After about 300 chickens on a farm in Nepal died mysteriously, H5N1 avian flu was confirmed and 1,552 chickens on that and a neighboring farm as well as 30 crates of eggs were destroyed yesterday by a rapid response team, according to a story in Republica, a Nepalese newspaper.
The WHO today put the H7N9 death toll at 112, considerably higher than previously noted.
As human H7N9 cases slow, the FAO says the risk of human-to-bird transmission is low.
A case of H5N1 avian flu has been confirmed in a 4-year-old Cambodian boy, bringing to three that country's cases so far this year, according to a joint press release today from Cambodia's Ministry of Health (MOH) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
More than 300,000 poultry have been culled at a farm in Guizhou province in southern China after about 1,000 birds died and more than 3,600 became sick from H5N1 avian flu, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reported today.
Data from seven European countries suggests that last season's influenza vaccine yielded about 42% to 50% protection, depending on the flu type, according to a recent report in Eurosurveillance.
The H7N9 cases reported in the past 3 days are from four of China's provinces.
