Zika virus in travellers from Vietnam but not in Vietnam...?

I'm Australian. Didja know? I am also trying to follow the comings and goings of Zika virus (ZIKV). These are two of the reasons why my ears perked up 24-March-20-16 when media reports described a ZIKV case in a tourist who had returned from Ho Chi Minh city and the central provinces of Vietnam.[6] He had arrived in Vietnam 26-Feb-2016, and became ill 08-March-2016, two days after leaving Vietnam.[6]

During the week (30-March-2016), Queensland Health (Queensland is a State wihtin Australia) released its weekly notifiable conditions data, which list ZIKV detections as a distinct entity (looking at you [1]) and listed Vietnam as the origin of acquisition of the (I presume) case reported by the media.[2]

Notifiable conditions report summary information.
Queensland Health.[2]

I also just noticed that the Australian Government Department of Health's ZIKV notifications table  now (below) lists two ZIKV infected travellers who reportedly acquired their infections from Vietnam. 

Zika virus - notifications of Zika virus infection (Zika).
Australian Department of Health.[3]

So what? Well, Vietnam - despite testing 784 samples for ZIKV from 32 provinces and cities nationwide - has yet to report a single local detection of ZIKV and there is no description of any mosquito testing.[4] Also confusing is the absence of Vietnam from the list of ZIKV affected countries on the Australian smartraveller website [5] does not list Vietnam among the countries to consider a risk for running into the proboscis of a ZIKV-loaded mosquito.

From smartraveller.[6]

So we keep watching and hope that Vietnam has plenty of advice coming to it behind-the-scenes from the World Health Organization (who also have not listed it in this weeks ZIKV SitRep [7]) about how to reduce the risks of the Vietnamese community becoming infected by ZIKV.

References...

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27016009
2. https://www.health.qld.gov.au/clinical-practice/guidelines-procedures/diseases-infection/surveillance/reports/notifiable/summary/default.asp
3. http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ohp-zika-notifications.htm
4. http://vietnamnews.vn/society/294585/tests-finds-no-cases-of-zika-virus.html
5. https://smartraveller.gov.au/bulletins/zika_virus
6. http://www.thanhniennews.com/health/vietnam-raises-zika-alert-after-australian-tourist-returns-home-sick-60511.html
7. http://who.int/emergencies/zika-virus/situation-report/31-march-2016/en/

H7N9 snapdate: new charts for sex and age distribution and region of acquisition...

Two new charts.

Click on image to enlarge.

Firstly, the "age pyramid", a revised and combined version of the age and sex distribution charts for 265/267 H7N9 cases to date. This one comes with many thanks to Shane Granger for helping me learn a new trick. Please follow him @gmggranger or visit his chart-tacular blog, Random Analytics at http://gmggranger.wordpress.com/.

Secondly, we have the latest map of the H7N9 hotzone; adjusted to account for Zhejiang tipping over the 100 cases mark (new colours!), and for the addition of a new province into the world of H7N9 human infections; Guangxi. This marks the first new region and 13th to generate cases overall, since 9-Aug-2013. 

H7N9 has thus crept sideways towards the west and as FluTrackers noted, Guangxi shares a border with Vietnam. An entire other country. The first shared land border since we learned of H7N9 I think. I'm no expert in this topic, but trade in poultry and tourists between these two regions seems commonplace, as noted here, here and to the extent that research such as this study (and its references) indicate H5N1 sequences are shared between the regions.

Do we know if Vietnam actively employs laboratory methods to screen poultry for H7N9, H9N2, H10N8 screening of their birds? I suspect we'll learn soon if not.