‘Pandemic potential’ after confirmed human death from new strain of bird flu

February 6, 2014 — The Independent.co.uk reports: “Chinese scientists have said the ‘pandemic potential’ of a new strain of bird flu ‘should not be underestimated’ after the first known human infection resulted in the death of an elderly woman.

The new strain is a variant of a virus known as H10N8, which scientists believe may have originated in wild birds, and later spread to poultry.

The victim, a 73-year-old woman from Nanchang City in south-eastern China, was the first person confirmed to have been infected with the new type, and a second case has since been discovered, raising concerns that the virus has evolved so that it can transfer easily from birds to humans.
Its emergence coincides with a surge in the number of cases of another bird flu strain, H7N9, which is known to have infected 286 people since March last year, causing 60 deaths. The vast majority of cases have occurred in China, but Taiwan has also recorded two infections, and the virus is known to have spread to Hong Kong, which has seen four cases.

Nearly half of the H7N9 infections since March have occurred in 2014, and Chinese authorities have warned that large numbers of people traveling across the country for the Chinese New Year may further the spread of the virus…” (Read Matthew 24:7; Luke 21:11 and Revelation 6:7, 8 – “…when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”)