By Bloomberg News - Apr 15, 2013 8:26 AM ET
Bird flu was found in a 4-year-old Beijing boy who has no symptoms of the infection, health authorities said, suggesting more people may be catching the H7N9 influenza virus than reported.
The first asymptomatic H7N9 case was discovered by health- care workers searching for possible cases, the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau said in a statement on its website today. The boy’s parents are poultry and fish sellers, and their neighbors across the street had bought chicken sold by the family of a 7- year-old girl whose H7N9 infection was reported two days ago.
The boy is under medical observation. The case suggests some H7N9 infections may be going unrecorded because of a lack of obvious symptoms. Almost all of the 64 people diagnosed with the virus so far have been extremely unwell, with complications extending to brain damage, multi-organ failure and muscle breakdown.
“With asymptomatic cases around, I think everything changes,” said Ian Mackay, an associate professor of clinical virology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, in a telephone interview today. “There has been a spike in pneumonia cases that have drawn the health officials’ attention, but the virus may have been going around as a normal cold.”....
Pandemic Threat
“The risk of this becoming a pandemic is increasing,” Yin said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in the Chinese capital, where a second H7N9 infection was reported today.
Sinovac has notified its suppliers that it may need to order additional fertilized chicken eggs to produce H7N9 vaccine, Yin said.
Under an agreement with China’s Food and Drug Administration, a Sinovac vaccine for pandemic flu doesn’t need to undergo clinical testing because its production methods have already been approved and the pandemic flu vaccine would represent only a change in the viral strain, he said.
Based on typical vaccine development and production schedules, batches could be ready for commercial use as early as late July, Yin said, adding that he is urging the World Health Organization and its affiliated labs to expedite the preparation of seed strains.
Sinovac has the capacity to produce about 30 million to 40 million doses of flu vaccine annually, said Yin, who founded the company in 2001 to make immunizations for hepatitis. The price to the Chinese government is about 20 yuan ($3.23) a piece, he said....Four international flu experts will arrive in China within days to help authorities respond to the country’s widening bird- flu emergency, acchttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-15/symptom-free-bird-flu-case-suggests-wider-h7n9-spread.html
