Taiwan issues level-2 alert for Jiangxi Province over H10N8 flu
ROC Central News Agency
2013/12/18 20:36:52
Taipei, Dec. 18 (CNA) Taiwan issued a level-2 travel alert for the Chinese province of Jiangxi Wednesday after China confirmed the world's first human infection of the H10N8 avian flu strain there a day earlier.
'People traveling to Jiangxi should take health precautions and refrain from coming into contact with fowl,' said Chou Jih-haw, deputy director-general of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Citing a statement from China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chou said at a press conference that a 73-year-old woman in the southeastern province died from H10N8 infection Dec. 6.
'The woman was admitted to a hospital Nov. 30 where she was diagnosed with severe pneumonia and died six days later,' Chou said.
The patient had a history of hypertension, diabetes and myasthenia gravis, as well as a weakened immune system, Chou said.
The only connection the Chinese authorities have found between the woman and fowl was a visit she made to a live poultry market, Chou went on, citing the Chinese statement.
He further said that individuals who have had close contact with the woman are being monitored by China's medical authorities, but have remained asymptomatic to date.
Noting that H10N8 is a low-pathogenic bird flu virus with waterbirds as its main parasitifer, Chou said the Council of Agriculture (COA) once detected the virus in feces at a local migratory bird habitat in 2005.
'But the virus has never been detected in locally raised poultry,' Chou said.
The viral strain has been found in live poultry markets in China's Guangdong Province and at its Dongting Lake wetlands, as well as in migratory birds, poultry and environmental samples in Japan, South Korea, the United States, Italy and Sweden, Chou said.
Speaking on the same occasion, Liu Yu-lun, a CDC physician and epidemiologist, said the COA managed to isolate 49 viral samples in a 2005 wild bird survey, five of which belonged to the H10N8 strain collected from bird feces.
The CDC has also managed to isolate about 86,000 flu virus samples from human specimens over the years, but none of them have contained the H10N8 virus, Lin said.
He said the CDC has asked China to provide the H10N8 genome sequence for comparison with that of the same viral strain collected by the COA from the wild bird feces.
'We hope to learn whether the genome sequence of the virus has changed (since we collected our earlier samples),' Liu said.
(By Lung Jui-yuan and Sofia Wu)
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