On Christmas Day last year, a 68-year-old woman in southern China came down with the flu. A week later she was hospitalized. The woman eventually recovered
On Christmas Day last year, a 68-year-old woman in southern China came down with the flu. A week later she was hospitalized.
The woman eventually recovered, but she spent three weeks in the hospital.
The culprit? H7N4, a new type of bird flu.
„This is the first case of human infection with avian influenza A (H7N4) in the world,“ the Hong Kong Centre for Health Protection said Wednesday in a statement.
The woman caught the virus from a live chicken, the agency said. And there’s no signs she spread it to anyone else.
So there’s no need to panic. Clearly, the virus rarely jumps from birds into people.
But the new case does add to a growing list of bird flu strains to keep an eye on.
There’s the dangerous H7N9, which killed nearly 300 people in China in 2017. And the deadly H5N1, which regularly crops up around southern Asia and the Middle East every now and then. And here, in the U. S., we’ve been battling H3N2, which is notorious for sending people to the hospital.
Oh, let’s not forget that pain in the neck H1N1, or the swine flu, which swept through the U. S. in 2009.
What in the heck do all these H’s and N’s mean? H is short for hemagglutinin. And N is short for neuraminidase. More about those in just a moment.
But first, we’ve got to cover the ABCs.
Influenza comes in three basic types: A, B and C. The second two — influenza B and influenza C — we don’t hear much about because they don’t cause big problems.
The trouble-makers are the influenza A strains. And boy, are they deviants.
Among other things, influenza A viruses are fashionistas. They cover themselves in an array of accessories.
