Via Xinhua: Chinese family of three infected with H7N9. Excerpt:
Chinese health authorities on Wednesday disclosed details of a family of three who were infected with the H7N9 bird flu in east China's Zhejiang Province.
A 49-old-man surnamed Yu from Hangzhou City was confirmed on Jan. 20 to have been infected with the bird flu virus. His 23-year-old daughter, who accompanied him at the hospital, was confirmed to have caught the flu three days later, according to the provincial health and family planning commission.
Yu's wife, who also accompanied him, was confirmed to have caught the virus on Jan. 27, according to the commission.
Yu has died. His daughter is in serious condition and his wife is slightly ill.
Experts so far have no final conclusion on how the virus spread among family members. Some think they all had contact with poultry, and others think the father transmitted the flu to his wife and daughter.
Even if the case is confirmed to be a person-to-person transmission, there is no need to panic, said Li Lanjuan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a specialist in H7N9 prevention.
"So far there have not been any cases in which one person transmits the flu to another, and the latter transmits the virus to a third person," said Li.
In this year's epidemic, the transmission has been limited to a second person, who does not transmit the virus to a third. The H7N9 bird flu is not likely to spread in schools, workplaces or gatherings, said Chen Zhiping, deputy head of the provincial disease control and prevention center.
The time intervals between cases are worrying, but I'll leave it to the experts to decide whether this was human-to-human transmission or simply different incubation times after a single exposure.
I still haven't found much in the local Hangzhou media about these cases—one reference, as a kind of news peg to a service article on how to avoid catching H7N9. I'll keep looking.
