H7N9 Bird Flu Death Toll Rises to 8

Another person has died in China of the new bird flu, H7N9,  bringing the death toll to eight, according to China's Xinhua Agency. Twenty others have been infected, all of them in eastern China.

The latest victim was an 83-year-old from Jiangsu who was admitted to a hospital with a fever March 20, according to Reuters, which attributed the information to Xinhua.

Close contacts of the H7N9 patients have been monitored, according to the World Health Organization’s latest update.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is already working on a vaccine, using the virus’s genetic code  rather than the virus itself, a first for the agency, according to Nancy Cox, head of the CDC’s influenza division.

Although H7N9 is more easily transmittable from birds to humans than H1N1, Cox said she expects to see limited human-to-human transmission.

Since H7N9 is not as deadly to birds as it is to humans, it will be harder to track because there won’t be large bird kill-offs, Cox said.

The big concern is could this become the next pandemic strain?” I hope not