Two additional people died from bird flu, bringing Asia’s death toll to 12 on Monday, while China said it suspected the virus has reached poultry in one of its most remote corners and United Nations officials warned that the outbreak was far from over.
A teenaged boy in Vietnam died on Monday, and a 58-year-old woman in Thailand who had died earlier was confirmed on Monday as a bird flu victim following an autopsy, officials said.
The bird flu sweeping the region is ”far from being under control”, said He Changchui of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
”It remains a serious public health and animal threat, particularly in China, Thailand and Vietnam.”
”So far, more than 45-million chickens have been culled, excluding China” in efforts to contain the disease, he said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) continued investigating the deaths of two Vietnamese sisters who may have caught the disease through contact with their brother in what would be the first human-to-human transmission in this year’s outbreak. But the WHO said there was no evidence yet of a new strain that can easily be passed among people.
Investigators have failed to trace the sisters’ infection to a specific event, such as contact with sick poultry, or an environmental source. Neither human-to-human transmission nor direct contact with sick poutry can be ruled out, the WHO says.
Health officials may never be able to confirm what happened, in part because the brother’s remains already have been cremated.
”The situation is always going to have a question mark hanging over it,” WHO spokesperson Bob Dietz said in Hanoi.
No other cases of people catching the virus from other people have been suspected anywhere else.
The latest death, of a teenaged boy, came early on Monday at Vietnam’s Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, according to hospital deputy director Tran Tinh Hien. The youth was admitted last Thursday.
The death announced on Monday in Thailand happened earlier, but health officials did not immediately say when. The unidentified 58-year-old man from Suphanburi province was suspected to have suffered from bird flu, and that was confirmed with an autopsy, Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphun said.
Bird flu has struck poultry in at least 10 Asian countries, but infections in people have been reported only in Thailand and Vietnam.
China announced five new suspected cases in poultry on Monday, including one in its remote northwestern region of Xinjiang — underlining the potentially broad range of the disease. Xinjiang is more than 2 000km from the southern region of Guangxi, where China’s first case of bird flu was confirmed last week.
With the new report, China now has three confirmed cases and eight suspected cases in a total of 10 regions spanning the country.
The WHO on Saturday urged China to take swifter action against bird flu, warning that its chances to contain the disease may be dwindling. Beijing has closed poultry markets and processing factories in some flu-affected areas.
The FAO appealed for international aid for Asian farmers, saying they may otherwise resist slaughtering their flocks, a crucial measure in stamping out the disease and preventing human cases.
When the deaths of the two sisters were announced last Wednesday in Vietnam, the director of Vietnam’s Institute of Clinical Research for Tropical Medicine said the women had helped their brother handle chickens at his wedding reception on January 3. However, the WHO said Monday that the sisters fell ill about a week after their brother did, which indicates the three did not get sick from the same exposure. The evidence suggests two different sources of infection, Dietz said.
Limited human-to-human transmission of the virus is not the real danger. What experts fear is the virus mutating into a form that passes easily between people — a pandemic strain that is a hybrid of the bird virus and a normal human influenza variety.
There is no evidence that a new strain has emerged, WHO spokesperson Maria Cheng said. Results from tests comparing the genetic makeup of the virus found in the two Vietnamese sisters with that found in other people are expected from Hong Kong in several days, she said.
Bird flu spread between humans in a 1997 outbreak in Hong Kong that killed six people.
Then, the virus passed from infected people to health workers but soon lost its punch and failed to transmit further. Symptoms were very mild or nonexistent in those who caught it from patients rather than birds.
The six who died in 1997 all contracted the virus from chickens.
All cases of human-to-human transmission recovered, raising doubts about whether the Vietnamese sisters caught the lethal strain from their brother.
Experts believe Hong Kong may have averted a global pandemic that year by slaughtering its entire chicken population in three days.
The WHO welcomed tests showing that bird flu has been in Asia since at least April, saying the virus has not succeeded in infecting humans on a large scale despite having many more months of opportunity than originally believed.
The disease also is being battled in Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan. However, the strain of bird flu striking Taiwan and Pakistan is different from the one hitting the other countries and is not considered a serious threat to humans. — Sapa-AP
First ‘human to human’ cases feared