Maria Cheng Quotes (29 Quotes)


    For us to assign public health significance to a genetic change we need to match it to what is happening epidemiologically how the virus is behaving and clinically if it's more or less virulent.

    It would not be surprising if it had spread from Turkey, but at the same time, we have no evidence yet that it has.

    Our office in Beijing was informed of this today. It is in a province that hasn't identified human cases before but it is somebody who seems to have a history of exposure to poultry.

    But this is a very short window of opportunity here. Because influenza spreads so rapidly we wouldn't be surprised to see this spread worldwide within a matter of weeks.... Once we start to see this in a larger area, across borders, then it will be very difficult to stop it.

    There is one confirmed case, the girl, and three suspect cases under investigation who have died. They include her uncle, the boy in the south and another case.


    We don't have any information about cases actually in the capital.

    She had similar symptoms and the clinical course of her illness was the same. So it would be very probable that she died of H5N1, but right now we don't have the laboratory test to prove that.

    It was ruled out before because all the indications at the time were that it was not bird flu ... Tests done in a laboratory in Baghdad had come back negative.

    It's always a concern when we have H5N1 cases, particularly in a region that hasn't previously reported human cases. That shows us that the virus is still a threat to public health and clearly that it has a capacity to move and to infect humans.

    We've never seen so many outbreaks of the same virus in so many different regions. Our concern obviously is that humans could potentially come into contact with birds infected with H5N1, which would mean populations worldwide are potentially at risk.

    Right now these new cases in Turkey, they don't elevate the global risk assessment, so we're still in the same pandemic alert phase that we've been in for the last couple of years. But it's something that needs to be monitored very closely.

    I think that's something we'll definitely be exploring how can we adapt these networks to be used for bird flu prevention campaigns.

    It is possible that they all had common exposure to sick poultry but it is also possible there may have been human to human transmission. We don't have enough information to draw a hypothesis either way.

    We don't have any information to suggest that this virus is more pathogenic or dangerous than other viruses.

    There have been three deaths, with symptoms somewhat similar to H5N1 infection. Other people are still in hospital, including one who is very sick.

    But we don't know what this means for humans. We don't know if they would play a role in transmitting the disease. We don't know how much virus the cats would excrete, how much people would need to be exposed to before they would fall ill.

    We regrettably announce that the first bird flu case in Iraq is totally certain.

    We are planning to tap into the polio network to pass on public education measures about bird flu.

    He is apparently in critical condition in hospital.

    There are no other suspect cases. There aren't any other people under observation.

    I'm not sure we've seen a cluster like this in terms of numbers and certainly it's a concern. Is the virus being transmitted more easily from birds to humans, or even from humans to humans We need to put all the pieces together before we can come to conclusions.

    The more chances H5N1 has to infect people, the more chances it has to evolve into a form that could spark a pandemic. And the place we're seeing the most human infections right now is Indonesia.

    I think really, (illness in) people like health-care workers and first responders would be our first indication that something is changing in the virus to make it more transmissible.

    At the moment we don't have very good information about how extensive these outbreaks are.

    When this outbreak (in Turkey) was first reported, there was a lot of concern it was behaving differently.

    Any attempt to strengthen the surveillance worldwide for H5N1 is a good plan.

    We don't have enough information to make any kind of hypothesis.

    We know cats can be infected. We know H5N1 is capable of infecting a wide diversity of mammals. We are not exactly sure what it means for human health, but I don't think it raises WHO concerns.

    We've seen images where quite clearly they are not protected properly. We see people with bare hands, their eyes, their nose and their mouth uncovered, where they are possibly breathing in virus,


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