The alert level was raised in the city after the hospitalization of a woman carrying the virus, who is in critical condition.
The Hong Kong authorities have raised the level of avian flu alert, which is now at the “serious” stage. A woman has been hospitalized since Thursday. She is in critical condition.
The 68-year-old patient contracted the H7N9 virus, a new strain of bird flu that has killed more than 170 people since its onset in 2013. It has been classified as an “imported” case.
Two weeks before her hospitalization, in fact, she had visited the district of Shenzhen, in southern China, where the strain was detected for the first time. She ate chicken, but had no contact with poultry, according to local authorities. In Hong Kong, twenty people have been diagnosed, three have died. All of them had contracted the virus in People’s Republic of China, according to the city’s Health Protection Center (CHP).
Authorities are now looking for people around the patient who may have been exposed to the virus. The city’s hospitals have adopted measures to limit the risk of contagion. Some have banned visits to patients.
Since 2003, Hong Kong has set up an early warning system for bird flu after the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic with similar symptoms.
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