According to Xinhua News Agency, the sample was collected from birds at the Nanchao Market in the Doumen District of Zhuhai City. The result was confirmed by the The Guangdong Provincial Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP).
Zhuhai City’s health chiefs have stopped trade at the live poultry markets for now, and urged local agricultural and forestry authorities to strengthen control methods.
The discovery follows a cluster of human cases of H7N9 in the Guangdong Province in recent weeks. The Health and Family Planning Commission (HFPC) of Guangdong yesterday reported that two patients in the region had become infected with the virus. The first, a 47-year-old man, was a poultry worker from Foshan. The second, a 71-year-old man, lives in Yangjiang and has no history of contact with poultry. Both remain in a critical condition in hospital.
Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) also confirmed two cases that emerged in late December, a 62-year-old man and a 38-year-old man, both from the Guandong province.
Elsewhere in China, authorities last week confirmed that a man from Shanghai and a woman from Zhejiang fell ill with H7N9 in late December. Additionally, an 80-year-old man died from the virus on 26 December 2013.
H7N9 is not the only strain of avian influenza causing concern in China. Last month, a 73-year-old woman in Jiangxi, who was suffering from severe pneumonia, tested positive for avian influenza H10N8. The WHO said this was “the first ever report of H10N8 isolated from a patient”. The patient was hospitalised on 30 November and died on 6 December. Her family confirmed she had visited a live poultry market shortly before she fell ill.