Minister allays bird flu fears after death
By Xiao Zhao (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-03-06 05:39

No further human cases of bird flu have been detected in Guangzhou, which reported China's latest suspected human death from the disease on Thursday, Minister of Health Gao Qiang said yesterday.

Samples of the victim, a 32-year-old local resident, have been sent to Beijing for a second check by the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao said.

The result of the tests may take some time, the minister said on the sidelines of a plenary session of the National People's Congress, which opened yesterday morning in Beijing.

He also reiterated that there was no human-to-human communication of bird flu in China.

Close monitoring is being conducted on a local market where the victim had visited, and on people who have had direct contact with poultry.

"You can rest assured that no further cases have been reported," Gao told reporters.

The victim, surnamed Lao, started to develop symptoms of fever and pneumonia on February 22. He had been staying at a nearby live poultry slaughter site while carrying out surveys of the market, according to an official statement.

The minister tried to allay concerns of the public, especially those in Guangdong's neighbour Hong Kong, about the fallout of the suspected case.

"We've informed the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions as well as some countries of the situation," he said.

"After all, bird flu is not something that is only just occurring, and people should remember that avian influenza appeared in Hong Kong in 1997, and on the mainland in 2004."

Judging from cases in different parts of the country, the major source of infection is believed to have come from migratory birds, the minister said.

China has previously reported 14 human cases of bird flu, with eight of them dead and the remainder making recoveries, statistics of Gao's ministry showed.

(China Daily 03/06/2006 page3)