In between Golden Week and Halloween, guess what time it is? It’s time to get your flu shot!

Ugh, do I have to, you may ask? Yes! Please do! The earlier the better. Especially considering how even a stuffy nose can get your child sent home from school in almost-post-pandemic Beijing. Even if your child only has a fever and not the flu, you need no fever for a minimum of three and up to seven before they can return, also usually with a doctor’s note.

I know, I’m very passionate about this. It’s because vaccinations help everyone, and kids are just little petri dishes of germs. We had to miss all the Halloween activities at their school last year because of the flu. No one wants that. And while we wait for a COVID-19 vaccination, let’s do everything else we possibly can to stop the spread of other germs.

This is your child’s hands 90% of the day.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) stresses that “You should get a flu vaccine before flu viruses begin spreading in your community since it takes about two weeks after vaccination for antibodies to develop in the body and provide protection against flu. Make plans to get vaccinated early in fall, before flu season begins. CDC recommends that people get a flu vaccine by the end of October.”

If your child is six months or older, there is a flu vaccine available. Special considerations are taken for pregnant women and people over the age of 65, but many options are still safe. In fact, the only at-risk group that needs special consideration is anyone with an egg allergy, and even then you can ask for a quadrivalent recombinant vaccine and quadrivalent cell-based vaccine, two egg-free options.

So here are the top places where you may want to go for your family’s flu vaccine.

Beijing United Family Hospital

The flu vaccine is available now, but their hours are limited during Golden Week. Make an appointment by scanning the QR code below to register and a member of their Service Center will follow-up to book your appointment.

Website: ufh.com.cn/en
Address: Beijing United Family Hospital: 2 Jiangtai Lu, Chaoyang District 朝阳区将台路2号
Hours: Mon-Sat 8.30am-5.30pm (may be different during Golden Week). 24-hour emergency care.

Vista Medical Center

Vista Medical Center provides the Sanofi Pasteur’s production Vacigrip* split-virion Influenza vaccination. Call for an appointment. Payment must be made in advance.

Adults: RMB 80 / dose, Children: RMB 80 / dose
Children (six – 36 months): RMB 820 / package (includes one-time consultation and two times flu injection)

Website: www.vista-china.net/en
Address: 3/F, Kerry Centre, 1 Guanghua Lu, Chaoyang District 朝阳区光华路1号嘉里中心3层
Hours: Daily 24hrs
Phone: 8529 6618

Oasis International Hospital

To book vaccination, please call 400-UR-OASIS at least 24 hours in advance. Total prices are below with the clinic fee already included in the price.

Domestic vaccination: RMB 153 – 500
Imported vaccination: RMB 500 – 610

Website: www.oasishealth.cn/l-en
Address: 9 Jiuxianqiao Beilu, Chaoyang District 朝阳区酒仙桥北路9号
Hours: Mon-Sat 8.30am-5.30pm (some clinics open from 8.30am-12.30pm), daily 24 hours emergency care
Phone: 400 876 2747

As of publication, these two don’t have specific information on their vaccinations, but they typically offer them at this time of year.

Raffles Medical Group

Website: www.rafflesmedical.com/international
Address: 205, Wing 1, Kunsha Bldg, 16 Xinyuanli, Chaoyang District, 朝阳区新源里16号琨莎中心一座105室Hours: Daily 8am-8pm
Phone: 65 6311 1222
Email: specialist@raffleshospital.com

Amcare Women and Children’s Hospital

Website: www.amcare.com.cn
Address:
Lido branch: 9 Fangyuanxilu, Chaoyang District 朝阳区芳园西路9号
Hours: 8am-4:30pm
Yayuncun branch: Bldg 5 Yiyuan, Anhui Beili, Chaoyang District 朝阳区安慧北里逸园5号楼
Hours: 24 hours
Wanliu branch: 7 Wanliuzhonglu, Haidian District 海淀区万柳中路7号
General outpatient center: Bldg 3 Yiyuan, Anhui Beili, Chaoyang District 朝阳区安慧北里逸园3号楼

KEEP READING: Throwback Thursday: Back to School Cooties

Photos: pexels

The Year of the Pig may be off to a rough start, at least for pigs and hog farm owners in China as authorities are implementing measures to curb the current outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) in several northern provinces.

On Wednesday (January 2), the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs published a regulation requiring slaughterhouses to ensure that pig products are tested negative for African swine fever virus (ASFV) before selling them to the market. It also orders slaughterhouses to cull all pigs and cease operations for at least 48 hours should there be an outbreak in their area.

The regulation goes into effect from February 1, the week before the Spring Festival. The move comes after Chinese authorities confirmed outbreaks that have affected at least 86,000 hogs on farms in Beijing’s Tongzhou District and others in Heilongjiang Province, the largest yet to happen since this highly contagious and fatal disease in pigs was first detected domestically in August 2018.

Dr. Liu Haixia, a general practitioner from IMC Beijing, explains that ASF is not a zoonosis, therefore, it does not cause disease in people nor infect humans.

The current African swine fever outbreak in China has affected at least 86,000 hogs, threatening pork production before Chinese New Year, a time when demand for pork products is at its highest level

People cannot be infected by ASFV even if they come in contact or consume the meat of infected pigs and the virus can be killed by high temperature and disinfectants,” she explained.

However, many people are still worried as they recall the 2009 influenza pandemic caused by the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus strain, a combination of different virus types that included a Eurasian pig flu virus, thus coining its informal term, “swine flu”.

Meanwhile, the Chinese public is still on the heels of a recent vaccine scandal, which prompted a crackdown and a subsequent “perilous drop” in the supply of influenza vaccines for the winter flu season, affecting major cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou. Despite that, the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in November that they were expecting a drop in cases during the current flu season.

What Parents Need to Know about the Recent Vaccine Crisis

 

 

Dr. Liu highlights the importance of getting a flu shot as it lowers the risk of contracting influenza, especially for high-risk groups including:
– Children aged 5 and below
– People over 65
– Pregnant women
– Health workers
– People with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other severe respiratory conditions
– People with chronic conditions like diabetes, or liver or kidney disease, HIV
– People who have had an organ transplant.

According to Dr. Liu, it is recommended to get the vaccine between the months of September and November, but people can still get a shot beyond that period as long as the flu season is still existing. She also says these preventive actions will help lower the risk of contracting the flu virus:
– Washing hands frequently
– Wearing a mask when going outside, especially on a polluted day
– Ensuring proper room ventilation
– Avoiding crowded places
– Maintaining a healthy lifestyle by eating more vegetables and fruits, having enough sleep, exercising frequently

If you are showing respiratory symptoms such as cough and sore throat, or have fever or experience muscle or body aches, it’s better to visit your doctor or take precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

For more information about swine influenza, visit the facts page of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here.

Photo: Leah Kelley, Matthias Zomer via Pexels

It’s pretty much common knowledge that flu season is upon us, and this nasty virus isn’t being very picky about who it decides to infect. So if you are or have been down with this nastiness, maybe you’ll find a small shard of comfort in that you are by far not alone.

China Daily reported this week that the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention had seen a notable increase in infections among children since the start of the month, according to their data.

Whenever there is a serious bug floating around, it is our kids at primary schools and kindergartens that are most at risk. So please remain extra vigilant. Make sure to remind them to keep those hands clean and that they can pick their friends but never pick their friends’ noses. Also, if your kid has the flu, please keep them at home. Luckily it’s still winter break, so this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

To be honest, the numbers that we’re reading are pretty staggering. The current rate of daily outpatient visits to the pediatrics department of Beijing Children’s Hospital has reached more than 10,000. It was unclear from the article whether, or not these cases were all exhibiting flu symptoms, but China Daily went further by explaining that respiratory tract infections and high fevers had increased by about 20 percent in recent weeks.

Considering we still have a couple of months left in the 2017-2018 flu season, it’s better to be safe than sorry this time of year so make sure to do some reading on some preventative measures that can be taken to ensure a healthy beginning to 2018.

Photo: China Daily

Shanghai’s been going through a rough patch lately – first it was tens of thousands of dead pigs found dumped in the Huangpu river and now two new cases of bird flu – it’s enough to make you feel a bit sorry for the citizens of our Great Southern Rival.

Yesterday the World Health Organization released a Global Response and Alert notice (GAR) citing Shanghai’s "two laboratory-confirmed cases of human infection with influenza A(H7N9) virus":

The first patient is a 74-year-old man, who became ill on 28 March 2013, and is now in critical condition. The other is a 66-year-old man who became ill on 29 March 2013 and is considered a mild case.

To date 18 cases (including these two new patients in Shanghai) of A(H7N9) have been confirmed in southern China, "including six deaths, ten severe cases and two mild cases," and over 500 more cases of people who have had close contact with the victims are being closely monitored. 

Alarming as this illness may seem, the encouraging news (for now) is that there has been no evidence of human-to-human transmission – the patients who have been stricken ill all worked directly with poultry – but the key question is if it’s only a matter of time before the strain mutates into a virus that can spread between people.

According to the Huffington Post, what’s got scientists particularly worried about the A(H7N9) virus, which causes pneumonia-like symptoms and difficulty breathing, is that it appears to grow more easily in the body temperature environment of mammals’ bodies than the H1N5 strain from a few years back.

Even more alarming is the possibility that in addition to humans other species, most notably pigs, may already be carrying the A(H7N9) virus as well, which has fueled speculation that Shanghai’s dead river pigs may be linked to the illness.

For now authorities have reassured the public that out of 34 randomly selected Huangpu River pig carcasses that have been tested so far, only one has tested positive for the A(H7N9) – but it remains to be seen if this sampling size is adequate enough to rule out a link.

And then there’s the matter of all the dead ducks, geese and swans found in the Nanhe River in Sichuan – Pulitzer prize winning science journalist Laurie Garrett, writing in Foreign Policy, reckons there is indeed a link between the dead birds and A(H7N9):

‘One very plausible explanation for this chain of Chinese events is that the H7N9 virus has undergone a mutation — perhaps among spring migrating birds around Lake Qinghai.

‘The mutation rendered the virus lethal for domestic ducks and swans.

‘Because many Chinese farmers raise both pigs and ducks, the animals can share water supplies and be in fighting proximity over food — the spread of flu from ducks to pigs, transforming avian flu into swine flu, has occurred many times.

‘Once influenza adapts to pig cells, it is often possible for the virus to take human-transmissible form.

‘That’s precisely what happened in 2009 with the H1N1 swine flu, which spread around the world in a massive, but thankfully not terribly virulent, pandemic.’
 

It all sounds pretty ominous, but is it time to freak out? Probably not – at this point you probably have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than coming down with A(H7N9), or even more likely one of the hundreds of other bugs that have been spreading through the city (and our office) now that the spring flu season is in full swing.

But if you think it better to be safe than sorry, the US Embassy has issued this advisory on a few precautions you can take (i.e. avoid eating runny eggs for breakfast) and over at myheathbeijing Dr Richard has a detailed post with additional tips.