03 April 2013/22 Jumada l-Ula 1434/14 Farvardin 1391/23 Yi-Mao (2nd month) 4711

“This reflects that either the virus is very serious, or the minor cases cannot be recognized by the frontline healthcare staff.”-Ko Wing-man, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Food & Health

Health officials in Hong Kong are scrambling to come up with a new test that can detect H7N9 in its early infection stage.   Officials point out that by the time the sick people in China were diagnosed with H7N9 they were already in critical condition, suggesting that H7N9 is not identifiable at the beginning of infection.

This also suggests that infected poultry do not show signs of H7N9 until close to death, which means potentially hundreds of thousands of imported poultry could be given a clean bill of health by inspectors.