Bird flu: China confirms H7N9 human death, NY cats contract H7N2 strain
Local health authorities in the Henan province in China have confirmed another human death from the H7N9 bird flu strain, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
The victim is a 36-year-old roast duck salesman who developed a fever and a cough around December 25 in coastal Zhejiang province, near Shanghai. He then returned to Henan in early January, Xinhua said, where he was diagnosed with H7N9 on January 10 and died the next day.
Bird flu is most likely to strike in winter and spring. In recent years, farmers have stepped up cleaning regimes, animal detention techniques, and built roofs to cover hen pens, in their efforts to prevent the disease.
China’s last major outbreak killed 36 people and caused more than US$6 billion in losses for the agricultural sector.
The H7N9 strain does not seem to transmit easily among people, and sustained human-to-human infection has not been reported, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. The danger is that any such virus mutates and acquires genetic changes that could boost its pandemic potential.
Meanwhile, hundreds of domestic cats in New York City in the US have contracted a highly contagious strain of the bird flu virus at shelters operated by a major animal rescue organization, and the virus also infected at least one veterinarian, officials said.
It is the first time the H7N2 strain of the virus, commonly found in birds, has infected domestic cats, according to the New York City Health Department.
Symptoms are generally mild, and include sneezing, coughing and runny eyes and noses.
The virus was first detected last month in 45 cats housed at a Manhattan shelter run by Animal Care Center (ACC) of NYC, and later turned up in cats at shelters in the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. It was not immediately clear how the cats contracted the virus or how it spread so quickly, the city’s health department said in a statement.
Health Commissioner Mary Bassett said the risk to human health from H7N2 is low.
More than 450 cats will remain at a temporary shelter for up to 90 days until a University of Wisconsin lab confirms they are no longer contagious, the city’s health department said. The cats are being monitored by the ACC, the New York Health Department, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
In December, the city’s health department and the CDC confirmed that a veterinarian had been infected at the ACC’s Manhattan shelter. It was the first case of cat-to-human-transmission of the flu, the city’s health department said. The illness was mild and short-lived.
The health department screened more than 160 ACC employees for the virus and contacted more than 80 percent of pet adopters from the Manhattan shelter, but no other cases have been found.
Residents who adopted a cat from an ACC shelter between November 12 and December 15 are being advised to monitor their pets for signs of sickness.
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