On Saturday, issues about the comeback of H7N9 bird flu virus and the possibility of spread, especially to Hong Kong, have been brought up again because of the first confirmed case in Southern China’s Guangdong province.
The Guangdong authorities had confirmed with the Wall Street Journal that a woman named Chen, 51, from Boluo County had contracted the disease after being exposed to poultry as part of her work at a market in Boluo. The woman was admitted to a hospital on Aug. 3 due to fever and is now seriously ill.
Last March, the H7N9 Human Transmission was established when the media in China reported about the death of a father and his daughter after contracting the virus. Ever since, 134 cases in Mainland China have been proven and 44 deaths, thus, leading authorities to shutdown poultry markets in a number of cities, in which, as claimed by experts has helped stop the progress of its spread.
Another factor that may have helped minimize the transmission is the warm weather but since the temperature is expected to drop in the coming months, we should be very careful and keep our immune system always up.
Given the statistics that many cases in families are identified, it is not yet affirmed if there is such thing as H7N9 human-to-human transmission which would make the disease fatal. But, the World Health Organization had cautioned that “the virus has more potential for such transmission than other known strains of bird flu."
With the case of Chen, out of the 100 people who have been exposed to her closely, no one has appeared to have contracted the virus, yet.
The health authorities said that they would still monitor traffic at the boundary meticulously to try to restrain the spread of the virus.
