Via Taiwan News Online, an informative article: Taiwan warns against underestimating H7N9 bird flu. Excerpt:
Doctors warned against underestimating the dangers of the H7N9 bird-flu virus while the country prepared for an influx of Chinese tourists during the May 1 holiday.
Taiwan’s only official case of the virus so far, a 53-year-old man surnamed Lee who frequently worked in China, was only taken ill after returning home. He was transferred to the National Taiwan University Hospital in Taipei on April 20 and is still reported in critical condition but stable.
The man is reportedly a former employee of computer giant Acer Inc., and an estimated eight employees of the firm visited him recently. As a result, the company ordered them to spend seven days working from home in isolation beginning Thursday, reports said. The group did not form part of an estimated 139 people mentioned earlier as having been in contact with Lee.
NTUH top pediatric epidemiologist Huang Li-min warned that with a mortality rate of 10 percent, H7N9 was more dangerous than the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS which hit Taiwan a decade ago.
New research from Hong Kong showed that the infection process could very rapidly lead to death in a patient of the bird flu, with breathing becoming increasingly difficult.
Huang said middle-aged and elderly people were most at risk of contracting the virus, only partly because children were less likely to frequent markets and farms where poultry was abundant.
Taipei City’s Renai Hospital said Friday that it had quarantined and was testing a man who showed some symptoms of the virus and whose father recently returned from China, even though his condition did not fully correspond to the official definition of risky cases.
The central health authorities said they received notifications about ten similar cases per day.
