Health authorities confirmed on Thursday that the latest human
case of bird flu in the eastern province of Jiangsu, which involved
a 52-year-old father, came from close contact with his infected son
and not a viral mutation.
The World Health Organization has warned that the virus that
causes the illness -- if given sufficient opportunity -- would
mutate into a form that is highly infectious and easily
transmissible from person to person. Such a change could start a
global outbreak.
However, this case -- although it involved the disease
apparently passing from one person to another -- does not exactly
fit the profile of an infectious human-to-human outbreak, and it
has remained something of a puzzle.
"It has no biological features for human-to-human transmission,
" said Mao Qun'an, Health Ministry spokesman. An epidemiological
investigation showed the father was infected through close contact
with his son, he said.
The cases took place in the provincial capital, Nanjing. The
son, 24, and the first to be infected, died on Dec. 2. The father
was later confirmed to be infected with the H5N1 virus, which
causes bird flu.
At the time, the ministry said experts had found that the virus
that infected the son had originated with poultry and had not
mutated. But it remained unclear how the son was infected in the
first place, as neither man had any known contact with dead poultry
-- the primary known source of the ailment for humans.
The young man, surnamed Lu, developed fever, chills and other
symptoms on Nov. 24 and was hospitalized on Nov. 27 after being
diagnosed with lower left lobe pneumonia. His father developed a
fever and was hospitalized for lower lobe pneumonia on Dec. 3, the
day after his son's death.
"The father has recovered," Mao said, adding that the cases have
been effectively contained.
Local authorities had kept 83 people who had close contact with
either man under close observation but none had shown unusual
symptoms so far, according to the ministry.
The case of the Lu family, although unusual, is not the only one
of its kind. Reuters reported last month that a similar case
occurred in Pakistan.
The latest cases bring the number of confirmed human infections
of bird flu in China to 27 since 2003, with 17 deaths.
Bird flu, or Avian influenza, is a contagious disease of animal
origin caused by viruses that normally infect only birds and, less
commonly, pigs.
(Xinhua News Agency January 10, 2008)