02 April 2013/21 Jumada l-Ula 1434/13 Farvardin 1391/22 Yi-Mao (2nd month) 4711

After two people in Shanghai died from a new H7N9 bird flu, the Shanghai Animal Disease Prevention and Control Center tested 34 of the thousands of dead pigs that filled the Huangpu River.  No bird flu was found in the tested pigs.

Of more concern is that the three human cases of H7N9 are not related.  The two men that died in Shanghai were not connected.  One was 87 years old, the other was 27.

The third person, a 35 years old woman now in critical condition, lives in a different province (Chuzhou city of Anhui Province).  This means the H7N9 jumped from birds to humans in different locations at about the same time.  The fear is that it will start jumping human to human.

Back in Shanghai city, 100 monitoring operations are located in hospitals and clinics, to report any new SARS or human bird flu cases.  Since November last year the only cases have been the two H7N9 deaths.

H7N9 in humans is so new that little is known about how it works.