An opportunity to demonstrate avian bird flu preparedness in New Zealand yesterday failed to impress. Arriving from Australia, a Philippines visitor outwardly showing symptoms of viral infection was tagged by staff as possible risk.So far so good, then it all went wrong. Within a short space of time the passenger was ?cleared? for release claiming he only had ?regular flu?.
Now I?m not sure what tests the New Zealand authorities have but this is pretty impressive to be able to prove non-existence of avian bird flu with just an ambulance driver performing the tests. Perhaps the rest of the world would benefit from access to this superb test.
More likely guess work was used to assume that the bird flu virus was not raging through the veins of this patient. Remember that the actual symptoms of avian bird flu will not established until a pandemic breaks due to mutation of the virus. In other words the symptoms today are unknown.
What an irresponsible risk to New Zealand though with a plane full of passengers exposed to breath of this person being immediately released into the public areas and to other flights.
If this had been the real deal, the damage could not be undone.
References:
nzherald.co.nz
Bird flu symptoms
Avian bird flu
No comments:
Post a Comment