It's already May 1 in Australia, and as usual Dr. Ian Mackay is ahead of the pack with the first post of the month. On his VDU's blog: H5N1 versus H7N9. Click through for a good chart.
This remains a kind of a pointless exercise. As I noted when I posted this first time back in February, but since I'm preparing some lectures I thought I'd post the latest version anyway.
These avian influenza A(H5N1) virus numbers have been curated since 2003 when the World Health Organization started an official tally. To that chart I've added where the current total number of laboratory confirmed human cases of infection by avian influenza A(H7N9) virus sits on the accumulating case tally (the green area-under-the-curve line). This blue dashed line highlights what we've heard before; H7N9 cases are piling up faster than H5N1 cases did.
From 2003 it took H5N1 human cases nearly 6 years to reach the 430'ish mark; it's taken H7N9 about 61 weeks.
