New Strain Of Bird Flu Kills Two In China

A worker injects a chicken with bird flu vaccine at a chicken farm in Huaian city, east Chinas Jiangsu province, 6 June 2007. A 19-year-old woman has died of the H5N1 bird flu virus in Beijing after coming into conta... A worker injects a chicken with bird flu vaccine at a chicken farm in Huaian city, east Chinas Jiangsu province, 6 June 2007. A 19-year-old woman has died of the H5N1 bird flu virus in Beijing after coming into contact with poultry, health authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong said on Tuesday. This human H5N1 case would be Chinas first in almost a year. Experts said while the case was not unexpected as the virus is more active during the cooler months between October and March, it points to holes in surveillance of the virus in poultry. With the worlds biggest poultry population and hundreds of millions of farmers raising birds in their backyards, China is seen as crucial in the global fight against bird flu. MORE LESS
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BEIJING (AP) — Two Shanghai men have died from a lesser-known type of bird flu in the first known human deaths from the strain, and Chinese authorities said it wasn’t clear how they were infected but there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

A third person, a woman in the nearby province of Anhui, also contracted the H7N9 strain and was in critical condition, China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a report on its website Sunday.

There was no sign that any of the three, who were infected over the past two months, had contracted the disease from each other, and no sign of infection in the 88 people who had closest contact with them, the medical agency said.

H7N9 bird flu is considered a low pathogenic strain that cannot easily be contracted by humans. The overwhelming majority of human deaths from bird flu have been caused by the more virulent H5N1, which decimated poultry stocks across Asia in 2003.

The World Health Organization is “closely monitoring the situation” in China, regional agency spokesman Timothy O’Leary said in Manila.

“There is apparently no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and transmission of the virus appears to be inefficient, therefore the risk to public health would appear to be low,” O’Leary said.

The 87-year-old victim became ill on Feb. 19 and died on Feb 27. The other man, 27, became ill on Feb. 27 and died on March 4, the Chinese health commission said. A 35-year-old woman in the Anhui city of Chuzhou became ill on March 9 and is being treated.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention conducted tests and confirmed Saturday that all three cases were H7N9, the health commission said.

Scientists have been closely monitoring the H5N1 strain of the virus, fearing that it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, potentially sparking a pandemic. So far, most human cases have been connected to contact with infected birds.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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