Breaking News – China’s intestinal virus affects over 4500

Posted by Daniel Teng on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

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The intestinal virus EV71 that is increasing its hold in China and manifesting as human foot and mouth disease has been classified by the CCP’s Ministry of Health as an official infectious disease. Anhui province’s Ministry of Health announced on May 3^rd that its 15 cities, excluding Chizhou and Tongling, have reported a total of 4529 cases of infection, with 22 fatalities in just the first days of May.
The CCP’s Ministry of Health’s report confirmed on April 23 that the source of this outbreak is the EV71 virus. This virus had caused 78 deaths in Taiwan in 1998, and this year there has been an increase in reported cases in Singapore and Taiwan. In China, provinces outside of Anhui have also reported increased cases of foot and mouth disease compared to previous years.

Infections have been reported in Zhejiang, Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong. Since the first death was reported on April 25, a second case was discovered the day after. Also, in Xiaxi province, there have been 137 cases of reported infections up to May 3.

Chinese media have criticised local authorities, as 5 cases of identical symptoms were first reported in early March in Fuyang city. The patients were all under 6, mostly under 2 years old. Most of those infected residing in the village died between March 27 and 29. Faced with an unknown disease such as this, local government announced on April 15 that the deaths were not related, and kindergartens requested children to return to school, resulting in the current widespread infection.

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