H7N9 update: It’s spreading! Getting pneumonia for no apparent reason might be a sign of H7N9!

02 April 2013/21 Jumada l-Ula 1434/13 Farvardin 1391/22 Yi-Mao (2nd month) 4711

Health officials in Jiangsu Province reporting one man and three women now infected with H7N9.

Jiangsu Province borders Shanghai, where two men died from the new bird flu.  Anhui Province, where a women infected with H7N9 is in critical condition, also borders Jiangsu Province.

Chinese national health officials have now ordered emergency monitoring.  Of concern is a growing number of pneumonia cases that seem to have no cause. The city of Shanghai has ordered that all unexplainable pneumonia cases be reported!

To show you how big this could be, Jiangsu Province has designated 16 hospitals as H7N9 hospitals. The four people who are sick are all in critical condition.  They all live in different areas of the province.  Health officials suspect they got infected sometime in the middle of March.  They were hospitalized by the end of March.  Test results were in by 01 and 02 April, confirming H7N9.

One woman is known to be a poultry culler.  Health officials are also monitoring people who’ve been in recent contact with the four new cases.