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The healthcare centre in Cho Moi district has reported nine suspected cases, eight of them from Na Tao hamlet. (bold mine) All nine showed symptoms of high fever, breathing difficulty and coughing.

The first A/H5N1 case was detected in Bac Kan on April 5. The patient, Trung Van Hoa, 22, was also from Na Tao hamlet.

At present, local authorities and health agencies are intensifying emergency measures to sterilise infected areas and strictly monitor new outbreaks of the disease.

Cho Moi district has been given 700 doses of Tamiflu vaccine(bold mine) and enough medical equipment to ensure that necessary checkups and treatment can be provided to local patients.

  Now today, a copyrighted story has appeared via the Canadian Press.  It has also been picked up by AP and has gone worldwide.  Here is that story:

Bird flu sickens 2 in Vietnam; 11 others quarantined, recovering from flulike symptoms

By Tran Van Minh (CP) – 5 hours ago

HANOI, Vietnam — Two Vietnamese from a poor, mountainous area have been infected with bird flu, and 11 others were quarantined with flulike symptoms, health officials said Tuesday.

A 22-year-old man and a 27-month-old girl remain hospitalized after testing positive for the H5N1 virus, said Hoang Van Linh, deputy director of northern Bac Kan province's health department. He said the 11 others, some of whom were relatives of the confirmed cases, had fallen ill with fever, coughing and shortness of breath.

They were given the antiviral Tamiflu and have since recovered. He said they were tested for bird flu, but the results have not come back.

Dead chickens were reported at the homes of the two patients, and the toddler's family is believed to have slaughtered and eaten some of the infected poultry, according to the Ministry of Health's Web site. Ly Quoc Khach, an infectious disease official from the provincial health department, said all 11 people, members of the Tay and Nung ethnic minorities, had contact with the sick birds, and he said he did not believe there would be any reason to fear possible human-to-human transmission if they did test positive.

The 22-year-old man remains on a respirator after being hospitalized April 2, while the toddler, who was admitted two days later, is in stable condition, Hoang said. All of the sick people's homes in Ma Tao commune have since been disinfected, and the infected poultry have been slaughtered, Ly said.

Vietnam has been hit with a spate of fresh H5N1 outbreaks among poultry, and two people have died from the disease this year, according to the World health Organization, which confirms 59 deaths since late 2003.

The disease remains rare among people, with most cases linked to direct contact with infected poultry. But experts have long feared the virulent virus could mutate into a form that allows it to spread easily among people, possibly igniting a pandemic.

Copyright © 2010 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

OK, time for award-winning commentary again.  Note that the Vietnamese press is listing three -- NOT two -- confirmed H5n1 cases.  Note also that the VoV article speaks of a Tamiflu blanket that has been applied over the entire district of Cho Moi, which includes the hamlet (and apparent epicenter of this bird flu outbreak), Na Tao.

Note that the total of suspected human bird flu patients is up to 11.  If we include the three previous cases, we have as many as 14 possibles.  This would make this the largest bird flu human cluster since 2008.

Bird flu is cropping up all over Asia again.  China is seeing a re-emergence, no doubt facilitated by illegal trade in smuggled birds (Google my blog of, oh, I dunno, maybe 2007 on that topic).  A veritable Ho Chi Minh trail of smuggling activity exists between China and Vietnam, the irony of which is not lost on Americans.

But I digress.  The Vietnamese government has acted quickly and decisively on the issue of Bak Kan.  They have applied a Tamiflu blanket over an area comprising 700 villagers.  They have eleven villagers in quarantine with clear symptoms of influenza, and three confirmed human cases. 

The next thing to look at is the timeline.  The first human case in Bak Kan was March 30th of this year.  The toddler was admitted two days after the first case.  The third confirmed case was "four or five days before being diagnosed with the virus," meaning some time possibly between the 30th of March and the 5th of April (the story was written on the 9th). 

The epicenter of the epicenter appears to be a commune within the hamlet.  Now I suppose it is possible that people would have eaten diseased poultry at the same time.  But the onset of symptoms is staggered by several day between the first and third cases.  This would cause me to speculate that you cannot exclude human-to-human contact.  And the simple fact that 700 surrounding villagers are currently on Tamiflu as a preventative would seem to support that hypothesis.

Hopefully, the reasonably transparent Vietnamese government will be very forthcoming with samples of this virus.  In light of the fact that H1N1v, aka swine flu, is still traversing those same remote hamlets of Asia, and in light of the jarring re-emergence of H5N1 bird flu across eastern Europe and Asia, we need to know:  Has bird flu mutated?