German avian flu case False Alarm
Big News Network.com 4th February, 2004
As reports of avian flu continue to come in from Asia, German doctors are saying a woman hospitalized there does not have the disease.
A female traveler who had recently returned to Hamburg, Germany, from Thailand was hospitalized earlier this week with flu-like symptoms. Her traveling partner was also hospitalized as a precaution.
Tuesday, however, the head of the institution where the woman was being treated told the German magazine Der Spiegel that her disease is with probability bordering on certainty not avian flu.
The same day in Thailand, authorities announced that a 7-year-old boy had died of the disease — making him avian flu’s 13th Asian victim.
Avian flu has now been found in Indonesia and continues to spread within China. The disease has, so far, only been shown to be transmitted from birds to humans, not human-to-human.
A recent UPI report, however, cites cases in which no contact to infected birds can be found and raises questions about the future of the disease.