Terra Daily: Scientists sounded warnings Wednesday over H7N9 bird flu in China and the H1N1 strain of swine flu in India that have jointly claimed more than 1,700 lives. H7N9 virus presents a high risk of becoming pandemic if China fails to close loopholes in its live poultry trade, researchers reported in the journal Nature.A different team, writing in the US journal Cell Host and Microbe, said a strain of H1N1 "swine" flu in India may have acquired mutations enabling it to spread more readily. Looking at H7N9, epidemiologists led by Yi Guan at the University of Hong Kong sought to understand why this dangerous strain emerged in China in 2013, faded away and then rebounded in 2014.
The reason lies in the live poultry sector, they found, with China's eastern province of Zhejiang a springboard for spreading the virus south- and eastward. In the 2014 outbreak, H7N9 mixed with other flu viruses, helping to create new strains, the team said.
Their evidence came from throat and faecal swabs taken from chickens at live markets in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces from October 2013 to July 2014. No H7N9 was found among ducks. Further proof came from analysis of flu virus samples taken from patients at hospitals in the southern city of Shenzhen, in Guangdong province across from Hong Kong...
An electron micrograph of H7N9 from the Centers for Disease Control
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