A least five cases of a severe brain infection known as necrotizing encephalitis caused by influenza were recently reported in Guangzhou City in southern China, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily, a local tabloid newspaper.
Dr. Xu Yi, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center, told the newspaper on Jan. 8 that children diagnosed with the flu have filled up the hospital’s infectious-disease ward. This past week, the hospital had roughly 300 cases of children with the illness.
“Unlike the H1N1 virus, which tended to attack children’s lungs in the past, the virus this year tends to attack children’s nervous systems. We have treated five children with necrotizing encephalitis,” the doctor said, noting that in the cases so far, the child’s health condition drastically worsens after getting the flu, and develops into necrotizing encephalitis.
The five children are currently in a coma.The Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control denied that there is any case of the influenza virus mutating, saying that currently, the flu is mainly caused by the Influenza A virus subtype H1N1, with some cases of Influenza A virus subtype H3N2, China’s state-run news website Beijing News reported on Jan. 9.
Former Ministry of Health official Chen Bingzhong, who now heads the China Health Education Center research institute in Beijing, is concerned that the virus has mutated.
