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Dirty Job
Photograph from Reuters
Technicians wearing protective suits begin to kill poultry at Huhuai poultry wholesale market last week in Shanghai, China, where the new H7N9 bird flu virus was first detected in pigeons.
Eight people have already died and 20 others have been infected with H7N9, all of them in eastern China, according to ABC News.
Nancy Cox, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's influenza division, told ABC News that her agency is working on a vaccine that uses the virus's genetic code rather than the virus itself—a first for the CDC.
But it's unknown whether the new strain will become a deadly pandemic, writes David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, in an opinion piece.
"Nobody knows, and at this point nobody can know, because influenza viruses are inherently so unpredictable. They mutate continually. Their eight major gene segments snap apart, like Poppit beads, and reconnect with segments from other flu viruses," he wrote.
Published April 9, 2013
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Masked
Photograph by Carlos Barria, Reuters
Among fears of bird flu, a woman wears a face mask inside a subway station in Shanghai.
H7N9 can be transmitted more easily from animals to people than did H1N1, the 2009 swine flu outbreak, Cox said. (See "Swine Flu Facts: Preparing for the Pandemic.")
Even so, Cox said she expects to see limited person-to-person transmission.
Published April 9, 2013
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Getting Treatment
Photograph from AFP/Getty Images
A Chinese boy gets flu treatment at a hospital in Hefei, China.
So far there haven't been any cases of the virus jumping from person to person.
Published April 9, 2013
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Passing the Time
Photograph by Darley Shen, Reuters
Vendors play chess beside birds at a poultry market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, on Sunday. The market closed live poultry trading on Monday amid concerns about bird flu.
Traces of the H7N9 virus have been found in pigeons, chickens, and quail, all available at live markets in Shanghai and other Chinese cities, and officials have ordered mass cullings and market closures, according to Quammen.
"If each of the people so far infected caught the virus directly from a bird, as currently supposed, such cullings and market closures might help," he wrote. (Read Quammen's National Geographicpiece "Infectious Animals.")
Published April 9, 2013
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Shot in the Wing
Photograph from Xinhua/Zuma Press
A health worker vaccinates a pigeon to fight against the H7N9 bird flu virus this week in Liuzhou, China.
H7N9—unlike the other notorious bird flu, H5N1—doesn't seem to sicken birds, let alone kill them, according to Quammen.
"That makes the problem of determining which stocks of captive birds—or populations of wild ones—might carry the virus very difficult to solve," he wrote.
Published April 9, 2013
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Taking Flight
Photograph by Aly Song, Reuters
A public park employee carries a cage to catch pigeons in People Square in downtown Shanghai.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong has called for more efforts to help patients and prevent the spread of H7N9.
During the 2003 SARS outbreak, Chinese authorities were accused of acting slowly and concealing the extent of the problem in an effort to ease fears about the epidemic, according to CNN.
Published April 9, 2013
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