Something rotten in the state of Denmark?

It is just after midnight on the US east coast and around 5 am in Europe. The Danish News Agency Ritzau (via Agence France Presse through news outlets in Asia) has just reported that a 25 year old Danish male was transferred to the Royal Hospital in Copenhagen Friday after blood tests at a local hospital in Nykøbing in southern Denmark suggested a diagnosis of avian influenza. No information on how he might have contracted the disease or his clinical status is available at this time. If confirmed, this would be the first human case in the EU. But there is a way to go before such confirmation or disconfirmation is obtained, so for now this is only a suspected case.

Meanwhile this Revere is going to bed. I trust when I awake tomorrow it will have proven to be a false alarm. I hope.

Postscript, 12:26 am, 4/15/06: A quick check of Danish and Swedish newspapers turned up nothing, so this isn't breaking news there. G'night.

Update, 7:26 am, 4/15/06: Xinhua and a Danish colleague I queried both confirm that the Danish suspected case has now tested negative at the hospital in Copenhagen. As expected, this was a false alarm. However, it is not unreasonable to think that one of these days . . .