H7N9 Case Notifications In Drips & Drabs

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Hong Kong's CHP has published another notification of an H7N9 case from the mainland, this time from the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning, reporting the hospitalization of a 58 year old woman.

The announcement from Shanghai, however, list her as living in Shandong.   This from the CHP.

CHP closely monitors additional human case of avian influenza A(H7N9) in Mainland

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health (DH) is today (January 9) closely monitoring an additional human case of avian influenza A(H7N9) in the Mainland, and again urged the public to maintain strict personal, food and environmental hygiene both locally and during travel.

According to the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning, the patient is a 58-year-old woman. She is now hospitalised for treatment.

From 2013 to date, 668 human cases of avian influenza A(H7N9) have been reported by the Mainland health authorities.

(Continue . . .)

Meanwhile Biological on FluTrackers picked up the belated announcement (buried in an EOM Epidemiological report) from Jiangsu Province of two cases from last December.  This tactic, of quietly releasing case counts (without details) - often weeks after the fact - has become increasingly common with some Chinese Provinces.

Perhaps the only good thing to say about China's notifications of human avian flu infections is that it beats Egypt's reporting of H5N1 by a mile.

While one hopes that both countries are being more open about sharing avian flu information with the World Health Organization than they are their own people, the paucity of information we see in WHO updates suggests otherwise.

Even under the best of circumstances we assume we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to disease outbreaks around the world. 

But of late with avian flu, we're barely getting ice cubes.