An 86-year-old man has been hospitalized in Shanghai with the H7N9 strain of bird flu virus, Chinese state media reported Saturday, according to dpa. The diagnosis was confirmed on Friday, according to a the city's health and family planning commission. The announcement followed a statement Thursday by the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that an elderly Chinese tourist infected with H7N9 had been hospitalized after travelling to Taiwan in December. The tourist, from the eastern province of Jiangsu neighbouring Shanghai, was reportedly in stable condition in a Taiwan hospital on Saturday. Fifty-five of 163 people who came into contact with the man have begun taking preventive medication, a CDC official was quoted as saying by the Taiwan Central News Agency on Thursday. They included three medical care providers who began to show respiratory symptoms and were asked to stay home, said CDC deputy director-general Chuang Jen-hsiang. Earlier this week, four new human cases of H7N9 avian flu were confirmed in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, bringing the number of reported cases on the mainland to at least 147, including 45 deaths, since the strain was first detected in March. Public confidence in mainland health authorities remains fragile despite assurances Friday that a state-sanctioned hepatitis vaccine programme had not caused nine infant deaths. The government also insisted that it had reformed government agencies responsible for managing the spread of SARS in 2002, H5N1 bird flu in 2005 and H1N1 swine flu in 2009. "It's deeply rooted in people's hearts that some relevant government departments cannot be trusted," read one typical comment posted on China's Twitter-like service Sina Weibo on Saturday. Avian influenza is a contagious disease of animal origin caused by viruses that normally only infect birds and, less commonly, pigs. It can be fatal to humans. In October, the World Health Organization said it had found no evidence of "sustained human-to-human transmission" of the H7N9 virus. On December 6, a 73-year-old woman became the first person to die of a new H10N8 avian influenza. Tests had confirmed the presence of that virus, not previously detected in humans, Jiangxi provincial health authorities said.
