Is Taihu Lake, Zhejiang Province the Geographic Source of the H7N9 Virus? (Map)
An important ahead-of-print article on the possible origins of the H7N9 virus has been published by researchers from the Zhejiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Hangzhou, China in the journal Zoonoses and Public Health . The researchers conducted genetic analyses of environment samples, human samples, and domestic and wild avian samples of the H7N9 virus from several provinces in the eastern portion of the People‘s Republic of China (PRC). The article, entitled Hypothesis On The Source, Transmission and Characteristics of Infection of Avian Influenza A (H7N9) Virus – Based On Analysis of Field Epidemiological Investigation and Gene Sequence Analysis is behind a John Wiley & Sons paywall. However, within the freely available abstract, these Chinese researchers propose that the H7N9 virus now infecting people and domestic poultry originated with migratory bird populations in the Taihu Lake area of Zhejiang Province. Their analysis suggests that . . . avi...