Shanghai stifled flu 'rumours' in early days, says report

[tetano]

Online speculation about recent flu deaths in Shanghai was quickly muzzled prior to the confirmation of H7N9, reported China’s Southern Metropolis Daily on Wednesday.

The report said censors had shut down internet talk after the first few deaths from the virus but before a national lab confirmed H7N9 as a new strain of bird flu, weeks later.

The first weibo post about the H7N9 avian influenza emerged as early as March 7, three weeks before local authorities alerted the public, said the report. An anonymous blogger on that day posted a message which reads:

“There have been a few unexplained deaths in the Fifth People’s Hospital of Shanghai. The preliminary diagnosis was flu. Their symptoms included respiratory failures. Will the hospital please tell us the truth?”

The post was quickly deleted. Other posts about the deaths also disappeared or were drowned out by netizens discussing the thousands of dead pigs found in a Shanghai river.

Hours later, Shanghai officials explained on weibo that health experts had already excluded the possibility of a bird flu outbreak. They acknowledged that two people had died at the Fifth People's Hospital - an 87-year-old man and his 55-year-old son - but said they died from complications and lung infections.

On the following day in an attempt to further “dispel rumours”, several Communist Party-owned newspapers in Shanghai published an article that blamed seasonal changes for an increased number of patients with respiratory disease, said the report.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/arti...-rumours-h7n9-bird-flu-early-days-says-report

 

[tetano]

Re: Shanghai stifled flu 'rumours' in early days, says report

Authorities deny delay in H7N9 reports

A senior health official in Shanghai on Wednesday denied media reports that the city might have delayed reporting the outbreak of the previously lesser-known H7N9 bird flu to the national health authorities.

"We finally confirmed the deadly virus on March 20 and soon sent the virus sample to the national disease control department," Lu Hongzhou, deputy director of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center and a leading public health expert in the city, told China Daily.

The Southern Metropolis Daily reported on Wednesday that the Shanghai health department confirmed the H7N9 virus on March 10 but reported the virus to the national health department 12 days later, triggering public speculation that Shanghai had deliberately delayed reporting the case.

"During the few days prior to March 20, we collected information, medical records and tested samples. It was on March 20 that we determined the virus to be H7N9, a bird flu virus that had never been found to affect humans before," Lu said.

By 5pm on Wednesday, the H7N9 virus had infected 33 people and killed nine of them, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. All the infections were detected in the eastern provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, and Shanghai.

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http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-04/11/content_16391666.htm