More than 50 travelers just back in the United States from China who had flu-like symptoms have been tested for the H7N9 bird flu virus, federal health officials say. So far, none has tested positive.
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CDC
Influenza A H7N9 as viewed through an electron microscope.
Both filaments and spheres are observed in this photo. |
But the fact that they’re being tested at all shows just how worried the U.S. government is about this new strain of bird flu, which threatens at the same time as a still-mysterious coronavirus from the Middle East. The test kits had to be specially made up and distributed under an emergency provision.
“While no cases of H7N9 have been detected at this time in the U.S., 54 people with flu-like symptoms after travel to China have been tested. All have 54 tested negative for H7N9; while six tested positive for seasonal influenza A, and three tested positive for seasonal influenza B,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in its latest update on the virus.
Emergency operations centers are running 24/7, keeping an eye on both situations. While it's not unusual for the centers to be operating around the clock, it is rare to have two pandemic threats at once to plan for, says Edward Gabriel, who heads preparedness and response issues at the health and Human Services Department.
"We want the latest and best information that we can get," Gabriel told NBC News. "We also need to look and see where it is moving to. To try to isolate its motion is a pretty significant thing."
If either virus turns into a form that spreads easily from person to person, a pandemic could follow within weeks. Both seem especially deadly in their current form: H7N9 seems to have about a 20 percent fatality rate, while the new coronavirus appears to have killed more than half its victims.
“In the case of the two latest threats — the H7N9 influenza virus and the new coronavirus — the number of infected people is small, and the infections are occurring thousands of miles away from the United States. Yet we should be seriously concerned about both,” Mike Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, wrote in the New York Times on Friday.
“Our public health tools to fight these viruses are limited. We have no vaccines or effective drugs readily available to stop or treat the new coronavirus in the Middle East,” Osterholm adds.
The H7N9 flu can spread silently, as people transmit influenza before they’re sick themselves. If the flu did mutate into a pandemic form, it would probably take at least six months to make enough vaccines to protect large numbers of people.
“It may take longer than it takes the virus to spread,” says Dr. John Treanor, a flu vaccine expert at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “The technology that we have today is such that the bulk of the pandemic disease may have already taken place before a vaccine is in place and can be used,” he added.
“The virus can spread very, very quickly. You are in a race against time.”
That happened in 2009, when the new strain of H1N1 swine flu broke out to cause the first pandemic of a new flu in 40 years. Companies raced to make vaccine but it was months before it was ready.
There are drugs to fight flu – a pill called Tamiflu and an inhaled powder called Relenza. Neither is a cure, however, and both need to be given very quickly to do much good at all.
Right now, H7N9 seems mostly confined to China and the spread has slowed. The World Health Organization reports 32 people have died out of 131 lab-confirmed cases.
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