By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
New York Times
Copyright 2007 New York Times
NASSAU COUNTY, N.Y. — Avian flu in Pakistan nearly touched the United States this month when a 38-year-old Nassau County resident returned from visiting family members who were later confirmed to be part of Pakistan’s first cluster of human infections.
But the resident, who landed at Kennedy International Airport on Dec. 5 and visited his family doctor the next day, tested negative for flu, both at a state laboratory and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the New York State Health Department and the C.D.C. said.
The cluster of human cases in Pakistan — which apparently began in November — was described last week in Pakistani press reports, which were picked up by flu-watcher Web sites.
But only on Saturday did the World Health Organization say that Pakistan had detected H5N1 virus in eight people, two of whom had died. The H5N1 virus is the strain of avian flu that has international health officials most worried about the threat of a pandemic.
All the cases occurred in the remote North-West Frontier Province, near the Afghan border, where outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry have been reported for months.
Exactly how the Long Island resident was connected to the cluster was vague.
Pakistani media reports said a man who had attended the funerals of his two brothers in late November had returned to the United States. State and federal officials could not confirm that on Monday.
While some reports said he visited his doctor because he felt ill, a State Health Department spokeswoman said he had not.
Another family member on Long Island had flu symptoms even before his relative returned from Pakistan, but both tested negative, the spokeswoman said.
Early local reports of avian flu clusters have routinely been confusing.
The Pakistani cluster appears to be the largest to be detected since May 2006, when seven confirmed cases in one family were found in Karo, a village in Indonesia. Others have occurred in Egypt, Turkey and Azerbaijan. In some cases, limited human-to-human transmission has appeared likely because relatives fell sick well after others had contact with birds.
There have been 340 confirmed cases of H5N1 flu in the world since 2003, 208 of which have been fatal, according to the World Health Organization. There have been fewer cases this year than in 2006, but the flu season has just begun.
The Pakistan press reported that the first case was in a veterinarian in Abbottabad who culled sick birds. He recovered but was reported to have infected two of his brothers, who died. However, the Pakistan government denied that human-to-human transmission had occurred.