Pneumonia kills one, sickens dozens
Ji Mi
2006-04-12
AUTHORITIES in northwestern China's Shaanxi Province are investigating the death of a high school boy and illnesses of nearly 40 of his schoolmates linked to a highly contagious pneumonia.
The sick children were hospitalized.
Separately, hundreds of children at a primary school developed fever after a mass vaccination.
The killer pneumonia in Qishan County has forced the Yidian Senior High School to suspend classes for one week since last Friday, Xi'an Evening News reported yesterday.
The one fatality was a third-year boy at the school, who died in the provincial capital Xi'an late last week after being treated at several hospitals.
Almost all the sickened students developed fever above 39 degrees Celsius, the report said.
Lu Huming, director of the county's Health Bureau, ruled out severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or bird flu.
The report said provincial authorities were trying to find out what caused the outbreak.
Elsewhere in Xunyang County, 226 children at a primary school sickened after they received measles vaccines. They suffered fever, vomiting and dizziness, local media reports said.
The county's public health agency and the education bureau arranged the vaccination for children between 2-15 years old in the county, according to the local Sanqin Metropolis Newspaper.
However, only children at the downtown Chengguan No. 1 Primary School had the three complaints, the report said. The children were inoculated for measles last Wednesday and Thursday.
The county's disease control and prevention center said on Monday they would investigate.
How far is this earlier Shaanxi outbreak from the current Shaanxi outbreak
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7313
Chinese school closes after unknown flu kills one student
BEIJING : A high school in northern China has been shut down after an unidentified virus killed one student and left dozens of others hospitalized with high fevers, state press reports.
Medical officials have determined that the outbreak in Shaanxi province is not bird flu but are still trying to identify the virus, the Beijing Times reported.
The virus was first detected after 19 of the students from Qishan county came down with high fever late last month.
One of the students from Yidian High School died after being sent to the provincial capital of Xian for treatment and, by Monday this week, a total of 30 students had been hospitalized with high fevers, the report said.
Most of the fevers registered over 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit), it added.
"At the moment we have ruled out the possibility of atypical pneumonia and the bird flu, but the transmission of this disease is getting stronger and the exact cause and source of the disease has not been confirmed," one unnamed medical official was quoted as saying.
With the nation jittery over bird flu following the deaths of 11 people from the disease over the past year, reports of unknown viruses hitting communities have made news recently.
In another case reported this week, more than 400 students at Henan University of Science and Technology in central China's Henan province were hospitalized with high fevers linked to an unknown flu that first struck the campus on March 26.
Officials at the school said the outbreak came after students had participated in a sports meeting in cold weather.
Some of the fevers registered above 39 degrees, but all students hospitalized were eventually released after three days of treatment, they said.
- AFP /ct
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7251
...is not all that far away from Mizhi county, Shaanxi province.
(Map of Shanxi and Shaanxi:
http://www.maps-of-china.com/maps/shanxi-s-ow-600x600.gif)
398
I hope that even though a local official has determined this to be ABBF, hopefully adequate blood and tissue samples will be provided to the appropriate WHO testing facilities for confirmation for what the cause was.
For the record, the closest most recent confirmed outbreak is Qinghai Lake--480 miles west of here. Incidentally, a quick search of info about this rural area of Mizhi immediately discovers the Mizhi Nitrogenous Fertilizer Factory...not the kind of thing one wants to find. Could this county be a major importer of chicken droppings from this part of China? Not good.
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