Late last night news came out that the sixteen-year-old male, surnamed Wu, died from his H5N1 infection. Young Wu had fallen ill on January 8 according to reports.
China has reported four human infections of H5N1 so far this year; three of the four have been fatal and the fourth, the two-year-old toddler is reported to still be in critical condition.
We now have a more definitive statement on the death of the toddler’s mother, though we will never know her exact cause of death. From the Shanghai Daily:
Mother of bird-flu patient dies from pneumonia [excerpted]
THE mother of a 2-year-old girl, who has been confirmed to be infected with the bird flu virus, died early this year from pneumonia in Hunan Province.
[snip]
“Her mother had contact with live poultry around December 21 and she had a little fever on December 28,” an official with the public health office of Hunan Province. “Then it developed into pneumonia and she died on January 6.”
We will never know what caused her death with certainty, but the case is solid probable as far as I’m concerned.
The article as I read and quote above (at 6:00 pm EST) was apparently edited at some point during the day because when I got home this evening and read FluWiki’s news thread this statement follows the last paragraph I quote above:
The woman was not checked for bird flu and doctors did not save any samples, therefore, health authorities will not be able to determine if she contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.
I do not know if the statement was removed because it was an incorrect statement, or a statement found to be objectionable by the Chinese government, I only know that it was there when the article was posted at FluWiki at 7:02 am EST and not this evening.
Yesterday, as I pondered these various cases, I wondered whether the toddler became infected first, or whether it was her mother. Sometimes we cannot judge such things by outcome (death in the mother’s case) because some victims are ill for a long time and some succumb rapidly.
We now know, without doubt, the mother became ill before her daughter. With the toddler’s January 7th symptom onset date, the day her mother died, a common source of infection is not as likely as it would be if the dates were closer together. The daughter may have been infected by her mother, if one believes the mother was likely H5N1 positive that is.
That granted, the possibility that is, reason dictates that we acknowledge the difference between the passing of an infection between those engaged in close personal contact and those who only have casual contact.
Casual contact is being with someone who gets no closer than around the three foot radius and no shared touch, cashiers in retail stores, wait staff in restaurants, and coworkers generally fall in the “casual contact” category.
Our family members and those we engage in some form of “touching” activity with (platonic or sexual) are considered “close personal” contacts. A mother and her two-year-old child would be a “close personal contact”, and a mother of one so young generally engages in quite a lot of “touching” throughout a day and evening.
We should always be concerned about H5N1 being passed from one person to another, but there are degrees of concern because the greater implications of the specific cases represent degrees of danger to the wider public. A mother infecting her two-year-old daughter does not carry the same public health (potential) implications as the mother having infected her neighbor with whom she had lunch.
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