The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) cautioned travelers planning to visit China to avoid coming into contact with fowl, after the country reported the world’s second confirmed case of avian influenza strain H10N8 infecting a human.
The CDC said it confirmed with Chinese health authorities that the second case of H10N8 was detected in Jiangxi Province, which is where the first-ever incident of a human contracting the bird flu subtype was reported in November last year.
The agency urged the public to heed a second-level travel alert that has been issued for Jiangxi; as well as for the Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hunan and Fujian; and the cities of Shanghai and Beijing.
The rest of China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — is under “watch” status, it added.
The H10N8 virus was previously detected at a live poultry market in China’s Guangdong Province and in its South Dongting Lake wetland, as well as in samples from migratory birds and poultry in Japan, South Korea, the US, Italy and Sweden, the agencies said.
The Council of Agriculture in 2005 detected the virus in feces at an aquatic bird habitat in Taiwan, but has not found the strain in any local poultry, the CDC said.
Experiments have shown that H10N8 is low pathogenic virus — meaning that it will likely be asymptomatic or cause only mild illness in birds, as opposed to the severe disease brought on by a highly pathogenic strain — the centers said, but added that the flu subtype requires further monitoring as it has the potential to infect mammals virulently.
However, the CDC said that genetic analysis of the H10N8 strain isolated from the Chinese patient has not shown any indication of genetic recombination with human flu viruses, suggesting that there is little risk of widespread human-to-human transmission.
None of the 250,000 samples collected from flu and unexplained pneumonia patients in Taiwan since 1999 have contained the H10N8 subtype, the agency added.
One of two tropical depressions that formed off Taiwan yesterday morning could turn into a moderate typhoon by the weekend, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Tropical Depression No. 21 formed at 8am about 1,850km off the southeast coast, CWA forecaster Lee Meng-hsuan (李孟軒) said. The weather system is expected to move northwest as it builds momentum, possibly intensifying this weekend into a typhoon, which would be called Mitag, Lee said. The radius of the storm is expected to reach almost 200km, she said. It is forecast to approach the southeast of Taiwan on Monday next week and pass through the Bashi Channel
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PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS: Hualien and Taitung counties declared today a typhoon day, while schools and offices in parts of Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties are also to close Typhoon Ragasa was forecast to hit its peak strength and come closest to Taiwan from yesterday afternoon through today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Taiwan proper could be out of the typhoon’s radius by midday and the sea warning might be lifted tonight, it added. CWA senior weather specialist Wu Wan-hua (伍婉華) said that Ragasa’s radius had reached the Hengchun Peninsula by 11am yesterday and was expected to hit Taitung County and Kaohsiung by yesterday evening. Ragasa was forecast to move to Taiwan’s southern offshore areas last night and to its southwestern offshore areas early today, she added. As of 8pm last night,
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