Look I know hypotheses are there to be disproved but did this one have to be shot down in flames 60-minutes after I said at a talk today, "...perhaps the very quick and large scale bird cullings and the live bird market closures actually eliminated the particular H7N9 that was spreading through humans in South East China earlier in the year. Perhaps even reaching far enough back to require a whole new random chance mixture of the different H7s and N9s and other genome segments to occur before that virus would ever be seen again."
Brrraaappppp!!!!!
Today we see the first new H7N9 case since early August (which was an onset of July 28th).
A 35-year old male from Shaoxing County, hospitalised on October 8th, tested positive by PCR. He is in serious condition.
Peak daily temperatures are not high in this part of the world currently - below 25'C for the week.
It looks like H7N9 might be well entrenched after all. Where there are severe cases, there may well be less severe ones.
A scientific article that I reviewed back in August, written by Yang and colleagues, showed that some poultry workers had been exposed to H7N9. These were relatively younger and healthier people than the PCR-positive ill H7N9 cases.
We're in for some interesting times ahead with H7N9; it's not done with us yet.
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