This has just hit CBC News: 1 case of fatal bird flu confirmed in Alberta.
Alberta health officials have confirmed an isolated, fatal case of a new strain of avian influenza, Health Minister Rona Ambrose said Wednesday.
The case, an Alberta resident who recently travelled to Asia, was confirmed in a lab test last night.
It's the first case in North America.
Alberta has seen a rash of influenza. The H1N1 strain of the flu virus, often called the swine flu, has been blamed for 10 deaths in Alberta, where hundreds of people have been hospitalized with the virus. Cases of H1N1 have been confirmed in Quebec and Nova Scotia.
This is eerily like the scenarios we used to imagine before H1N1 popped up in our own back yard in 2009: A traveller arriving from Asia with H5N1.
#H5N1 is on the story, and reports that the person died on January 3. And CBC Radio is leading the news with it: The Alberta resident arrived from China on December 27.
