A 72-year-old local woman tested positive for the H7N9 avian influenza, Health Bureau (SSM) Director Lei Chin Ion said on Thursday during a special press conference at the public Conde de Sao Januario Hospital Centre late last night.
Lei said it was the first confirmed imported case of H7N9 avian influenza in Macau.
The first locally contracted case of H7N9 was reported last month. That patient has made a full recovery.
Lei said the patient lives mainly in Zhongshan, about 40 kilometres north of Macau. She went to a hospital in Zhongshan on Sunday because she had a fever and had been coughing.
After entering Macau on Tuesday with her family, the woman was taken to the Conde de Sao Januario Hospital Centre where she was diagnosed with pneumonia, after which she was immediately hospitalised.
She did not have a fever and did not tell medical staff that she had been in close physical contact with live poultry when she was admitted to the local hospital.
Lei said the patient’s mucus tested positive for H7N9 on Thursday and she was immediately put into an isolation ward. She said that she was keeping live poultry in Zhongshan.
According to Lei, 43 people have been in close contact with the patient including her family members, medical staff, ambulance crews who took her to the hospital, as well as the patients beside her while she was in a general ward, all of whom are now on the antiviral medication Tamiflu.
(Macau News / The Macau Post Daily)
