Maria Cheng
Maria Cheng
behaving concern
When this outbreak (in Turkey) was first reported, there was a lot of concern it was behaving differently.
fatal laboratory samples
The laboratory in the U.K. said that they have detected H5N1 in samples from the two fatal cases.
beijing cases exposure history human identified informed office province seems somebody
Our office in Beijing was informed of this today. It is in a province that hasn't identified human cases before but it is somebody who seems to have a history of exposure to poultry.
common draw either exposure human hypothesis information possible poultry sick
It is possible that they all had common exposure to sick poultry but it is also possible there may have been human to human transmission. We don't have enough information to draw a hypothesis either way.
somewhere
It could be Asia. It could be somewhere else.
alert cases couple elevate global last needs pandemic phase risk
Right now these new cases in Turkey, they don't elevate the global risk assessment, so we're still in the same pandemic alert phase that we've been in for the last couple of years. But it's something that needs to be monitored very closely.
adapt bird definitely exploring flu networks prevention
I think that's something we'll definitely be exploring how can we adapt these networks to be used for bird flu prevention campaigns?
apparently condition critical
He is apparently in critical condition in hospital.
according case dismissed eastern office
According to our Eastern Mediterranean office, it's been dismissed as a case ... they got back to us that it was not avian influenza.
cases contain identify might rapidly spread
If we are able to identify cases rapidly enough so that we could put in these measures, they might effectively contain the spread of a pandemic,
cats exposed fall means people role virus
But we don't know what this means for humans. We don't know if they would play a role in transmitting the disease. We don't know how much virus the cats would excrete, how much people would need to be exposed to before they would fall ill.
extensive good information moment
At the moment we don't have very good information about how extensive these outbreaks are.
birds certainly cluster easily humans numbers pieces seen sure terms together virus
I'm not sure we've seen a cluster like this in terms of numbers and certainly it's a concern. Is the virus being transmitted more easily from birds to humans, or even from humans to humans? We need to put all the pieces together before we can come to conclusions.
infected mammals means
We know that mammals can be infected by H5N1, but we don't know what this means for humans.