 |  | The boy, who survived, could be the earliest known victim in Mexico of the never-before-seen virus, Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said on Monday (left). -- PHOTO: REUTERS |
MEXICO CITY - A FOUR-YEAR-OLD has emerged as a possible Patient Zero as Mexico, at the centre of a global swine flu epidemic, struggled to piece together its lethal march.
The boy, who survived, could be the earliest known victim in Mexico of the never-before-seen virus, Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said on Monday. He could have contacted the virus even before Ms Maria Adela Gutierrez, 39, the first fatality of the swine flu confirmed by the Mexican government. Ms Gutierrez died on April 13 in the southern city of Oaxaca.
Tests show that the little boy contracted the disease at least two weeks earlier in neighbouring Veracruz state, where a community has been protesting against pollution from a large pig farm, Dr Cordova said. The boy's case provides an important clue of the strain's path.
He lived near a pig farm run by a US-Mexican company, Granjas Carroll, in the municipality of Perote. He contracted the disease on April 2, Dr Cordova said, and was part of a group of residents who came down with what at the time was labelled a particularly bad case of the flu in the area. Some people reported being sick even as early as February.
Local residents were convinced they were sickened by air and water contamination from pig waste. But a spokesman for Granjas Carroll said the company has found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in its swine herd or its employees.
Local health workers intervened early this month, sealing off a town in Perote and spraying to kill off flies. Local officials also claimed that the infection might have started with a migrant farmer who returned from work in the United States.
Only one sample from the group who was ill - that belonging to the boy - was preserved. It was only after US and Canadian epidemiologists discovered the true nature of the virus that Mexico submitted the sample for international testing, and discovered what he suffered from.
The boy has since recovered.
It is unknown how many more of the hundreds of people who fell sick around April 2 in Perote were also infected by the more virulent strain.
In another ominous disclosure, officials said Ms Gutierrez, the first confirmed fatality of the swine flu, worked as a door-to-door census-taker and might have had contact with scores of people before being hospitalised. But Oaxaca officials denied local news reports that said she had infected 20 people, plus her husband and children. -- LOS ANGELES TIMES, ASSOCIATED PRESS
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