China's 1st bird flu case occurs in 2003: ministry

[kr105]

China confirms human bird flu case from year 2003

08 Aug 2006 05:37:33 GMT
Source: Reuters


BEIJING, Aug 8 (Reuters) - China confirmed on Tuesday that the country's first human case of the H5N1 bird flu virus was in November 2003, two years earlier than originally reported, Xinhua news agency said.

The case had spurred questions about whether there might have been other human H5N1 infections in China prior to what had been its first reported human case, near the end of 2005.

Eight Chinese researchers published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in June saying a 24-year-old man, who was admitted to hospital in November 2003 for respiratory distress and pneumonia and later died, had been infected with H5N1.

The 24-year-old Chinese man exhibited clinical symptoms of the respiratory disease SARS when he was admitted to hospital but tested negative for that.

His virus samples genetically resembled H5N1 viruses taken from Chinese chickens in various provinces in 2004, the eight experts said.

"The ministry confirmed the case by parallel laboratory tests, which were carried out in cooperation with the World Health Organization," Xinhua said in a brief report.

The scientists' findings were one of the clearest indications yet that the virus might have been brewing for much longer in the vast country than what had been reported.

The H5N1 virus made its first known jump to humans in Hong Kong in late 1997, and then more or less petered out until it re-emerged in parts of Southeast Asia in late 2003, when it killed three people in Vietnam.

The virus is known to have infected 19 people in China since last year, killing 12 of them, according to WHO.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK22715.htm

[Jeremy]

China's 1st bird flu case occurs in 2003: ministry

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_4936888.htm
BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Ministry of Health confirmed Tuesday that the country's first human case of H5N1 birdflu occurred two years earlier than previously thought, in November 2003.

A letter published by eight Chinese scientists on June 22 in the New England Journal of Medicine said that the bird flu virus had been isolated in a 24-year-old man who died in Beijing in 2003.
The man, surnamed Shi, became ill with pneumonia and respiratory disease in November 2003 and died four days after being hospitalized. China was then in the aftermath of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and the case was initially thought to be a SARS case. However, lab tests for SARS proved negative.
Parallel laboratory tests, carried out in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), later confirmed that it was a human case of bird flu.
"This is the first human case confirmed on the Chinese mainland and the first human infection confirmed in the world in the current H5N1 virus cycle," said Roy Wadia, WHO Beijing office spokesman.
Before the case was revealed, China's first official human case of bird flu was thought to have occurred in Nov 2005. Nineteen human cases have been confirmed since then, including 12 deaths.
"Although this mainland case occurred two years earlier than other cases, there is no reason to think that China had an outbreak of bird flu in 2003," said Mao Qun'an, spokesman for the Ministry of Health.
"People shouldn't panic," he told Xinhua in an interview. "The country's bird flu surveillance capability is much stronger now than it was two years ago."
Mao said the Ministry was treating the case as a result of individual scientific research, and had no plans to probe more cases from that period.
But Wadia said it was "highly possible" that other cases of bird flu may have occurred during SARS and that they were misdiagnosed as pneumonia or treated as cases with unknown causes.
"There was no outbreak in poultry when this case appeared, which again highlights the importance of strengthening surveillance in the animal sector," Wadia said.
The first human cases of H5N1 bird flu occurred in Hong Kong in1997. Eighteen cases including six deaths were reported at that time. The current cycle of the virus began in late 2003 and felledits first victim in Vietnam in January 2004. Globally, there have so far been 233 confirmed human cases of bird flu. By Aug. 7, 135 of the people had died, according to WHO figures. Enditem

[Jeremy]

Re: China's 1st bird flu case occurs in 2003: ministry

Mao said the Ministry was treating the case as a result of individual scientific research, and had no plans to probe more cases from that period.

Probe more cases from that period. Why do that? That would make too much sense.

But Wadia said it was "highly possible" that other cases of bird flu may have occurred during SARS and that they were misdiagnosed as pneumonia or treated as cases with unknown causes.

Is this really a suprise? No.

[sharon sanders]

Re: China's 1st bird flu case occurs in 2003: ministry

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8601

[MHSC]

He was a soldier

Official test confirms Chinese soldier died of bird flu in November 2003

Provided by: Canadian Press
Written by: HELEN BRANSWELL
Aug. 8, 2006

(CP) - Chinese authorities confirmed Tuesday that a soldier who died in November of 2003 succumbed to H5N1 avian flu, making him that country's earliest known case to date.



Formal acceptance of the cause of the soldier's death rewrites China's official chronology on the emergence of H5N1 in that country. China first acknowledged outbreaks of the virus in poultry in February 2004 and reported its first two human cases of H5N1 to the World Health Organization in November of 2005.


This retrospective case first came to light in June when a group of Chinese military scientists stunned the scientific community - and, it would seem, Chinese health authorities - by reporting in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine that a soldier thought to have been suffering from SARS in November 2003 actually died from avian influenza.


Two weeks ago a group of scientists, including experts representing the World Health Organization, retested the samples from the soldier. The test was positive, China's Health Ministry acknowledged Tuesday in a statement released on its website.


Questions still remain about why the case didn't come to light earlier. But China appears to be signalling with Tuesday's announcement that it would like to draw a line under the investigation into this case.


"I think at this point it would be safe to say from the government's point of view they want to move on," Roy Wadia, a spokesperson in the WHO's China office, said Tuesday from Beijing.


Wadia said in a meeting with ministry of health authorities, WHO officials stressed it would be useful to review other similar cases to see if previous H5N1 cases occurred but were not detected at the time. But the ministry of health did not seem keen to undertake a search for retrospective cases, citing the amount of human resources and time such a task would absorb, he said.


Instead, they said they concentrate on trying to learn more about how more recent cases have become infected.


"I think they would be focusing more on the current crop of known human cases than going back and doing a comprehensive rehash," Wadia said.
Many of China's human cases have had no discernible links to infected poultry. That may be due to under-reporting of poultry outbreaks or the fact that widespread vaccination of poultry may make it more difficult to see where the virus is circulating.


This case brings to 20 the known human infections in China; 13 of those people have died. Worldwide the WHO says 234 people have been confirmed to have been infected since H5N1 re-emerged in late 2003 and 136 of them have died.

http://bodyandhealth.canada.com/channel_health_news_details.asp?news_id=10401&news_channel_id=1020&channel_id=1020&rot=11

[Laidback Al]

Re: China's 1st bird flu case occurs in 2003: ministry

H5N1 Individual Case Report
__________________________________________________ _____________________________________
caseid: 24
Country: China
City and Region: Beijing
Name: Shi
Sex: M
Age: 24
Symptom onset:
Hospital Admission: 11/25/2003
Death: 12/3/2003
Outcome: D
WHO confirmed: Yes
Report Hyperlink
8/8/2006 http://www.who.int/csr/don/2006_08_08/en/index.html
6/1/2006 http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/354/25/273
8/8/2006 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_4936888.htm
8/8/2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060808...healthchinaflu

[gsgs]

Re: China's 1st bird flu case occurs in 2003: ministry

[Investigation on the source of the first human of avian influenza A (H5N1) case in Beijing.]
[Article in Chinese]

Yang P, Shi J, Ma JX, Liu XJ, Qi SX, Huang F, Shi WX, Peng XM, L? YN, Liang HJ, Li XY, Dou XF, Wang XL, Zhang Y, Pang XH, He X, Wang QY.

Institute of Infectious and Endemic Diseases Control, Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 100013, China.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the source of the first human case of avian influenza A (H5N1) infection in Beijing. METHODS: Interviewing the relatives of the case and other key persons, collecting and detecting samples of related biological, epidemiological and environmental data of the case were conducted. Later, the infection source was thoroughly investigated. RESULTS: The case ever contacted a slaughtered duck 5 days prior to the onset of illness, and the duck was bought from a stall of a wet market in Yanjiao area of Hebei province. Ten environmental samples were collected in this stall and the neighboring stall of the market. Another 6 samples were tested positive for H5N1 virus by PCR method, with 5 virus strains isolated. The whole-genome sequencing indicated that the amino acid homology between the H5N1 virus strains from the environment and the virus isolated from the case reached 99.8% - 100%. CONCLUSION: From both epidemiological and virological evidence, it was proved that the first human case of avian influenza A (H5N1) infection in Beijing was infected by a duck that carrying H5N1 virus the case contacted 5 days proceeding the onset of illness.

[sharon sanders]

Re: China's 1st bird flu case occurs in 2003: ministry

Thanks Gsgs!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20193576?dopt=Abstract