BEIJING — The new strain of avian influenza that has infected more than 100 people in China in the last two months has, for the first time, been reported outside mainland China.
Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
On Tuesday, people in Shanghai took precautions after an outbreak of the H7N9 bird flu virus.
Officials in Taiwan reported one case in a 53-year-old Taiwanese citizen who traveled regularly to the Chinese city of Suzhou for work, where he probably contracted the virus. He fell ill on April 12, three days after returning to Taiwan. Tests revealed on Wednesday that he was infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus. As of Tuesday, Chinese officials had reported 108 cases and 22 deaths from the new flu.
The case has set off alarms in Taiwan, where the Central Epidemic Command Center says that it has "continued to strengthen surveillance and fever screening of travelers arriving from China."
The patient in Taiwan, described as severely ill, is being treated in a special isolation room, and 139 people who had contact with him — including 110 health workers — are being watched for symptoms. So far, there is no evidence that any have contracted the disease, which has not been found to spread from person to person.
Officials elsewhere in the region are increasingly jittery about the spread of the virus from China. On Wednesday, Japan said it was racing to make changes that would essentially allow local governments to consign bird flu patients or suspected patients to hospitals, and order them to stay away from their workplaces. The Japanese government took similar precautions during epidemics of the H5N1 and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, viruses in the last decade.
Hong Kong, scarred by an outbreak of SARS in 2003 that started with an infected visitor from mainland China and that killed 299 Hong Kong residents, has also been making preparations. Concerns have focused on the annual influx of vacationers from all over mainland China next week during the annual May Day holiday. But with nearly three dozen flights arriving on a typical day from Shanghai during the rest of the year, the possibility of the disease spreading has been a worry for health policy makers.
The Hong Kong government has put on standby several hundred hospital beds specially designed after SARS for the isolation and treatment of highly infectious respiratory diseases. A system of infrared scanners operating at the territory's borders ever since the SARS outbreak checks arrivals for fever, and nurses take aside anyone who seems sick for further questioning and sometimes testing.
In a news conference Wednesday in Beijing, a World Health Organization official described this type of bird flu as "unusually dangerous."
The virus is "definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses we've seen," said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, an assistant director general at the World Health Organization.
"The potential development of human-to-human spread cannot be ruled out," the health organization said in a statement.
In the United States, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have received samples of the virus from China and have shared them with five other laboratories to study the virus and work on a vaccine.
Health officials in the United States have not advised against travel to China.
Scientists think people catch the virus from poultry, not from other humans. But if it could spread among people, a deadly pandemic could result. Researchers say it is worrisome that the new virus may be better than other types of bird flu at jumping from birds to humans.
The H5N1 bird flu virus, which emerged about a decade ago, has killed 371 people, nearly 60 percent of the 622 known to be infected since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. Because of its apparently high death rate, that virus touched off global fears of a lethal pandemic and led to the slaughter of millions of birds. But it could not be stamped out.
The patient in Taiwan said he had not been exposed to birds or eaten undercooked poultry or eggs. Cases like his have puzzled scientists and led some to suspect that an animal other than birds is harboring the virus and spreading it to humans. But so far no other animals have been found to be infected.
Bree Feng reported from Beijing, and Denise Grady from New York. Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.
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