faulker024

Since November 2016, more than 460 human cases of H7N9 have been reported or imported from China. To put this number in perspective, confirmed cases of H7N9 were first reported in March 2013, four years ago. Of all the cases of human H7N9 infections reported to date, more than one-third (about 36%), have occurred in the last four months. This raises a concern that H7N9 is not only causing outbreaks in China but could lead to epidemics and perhaps even a pandemic. It is difficult to tabulate exactly how many H7N9 cases have occurred since November 1 of 2016, because case reporting and enumeration seem to vary among various public health reporting agencies. Media and blog reports have interpreted variation among these counts of H7N9 cases as a failure of public health officials in China to accurately track H7N9 cases, often leading to exaggerated claims of the rates of infection in China. It is possible to arrive at a close approximation of the actual number of recent cases by using dif...