China has warned of a 鈥渧ery high鈥� possibility of outbreaks of bird flu over winter and spring as the country鈥檚 scientists hunt for the causal link between a son and a father struck by the virus, state media said on Tuesday.
A 24-year-old man surnamed Lu from eastern Jiangsu province died on 2 December of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the first case in China since June. Late last week, his 52-year-old father was also diagnosed with the disease, raising questions about how the man was infected.
The rare case of two family members struck by the disease has drawn urgent concern from health authorities, as humans almost always contract H5N1 from infected birds. Experts fear the virus could mutate into a strain that jumps easily from person to person, enabling it to go pandemic.
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Chinese 午夜福利1000集合 Ministry spokesman Mao Qun鈥檃n said analysis of a sample taken from the dead son indicated the bird flu virus had not mutated, but he could not exclude the possibility of human-to-human infection in this case.
鈥淭he virus is still avian and has not undergone a mutation in its nature,鈥� he told a news conference in Beijing on Monday. Mao said one of the men might nonetheless have infected the other through close contact, or they might have become infected from another source or separate sources.
Change needed
鈥淲e can鈥檛 offer a final determination on these three possibilities,鈥� he said, according to a . 鈥淭here is a thorough investigation under way.鈥�
China, with the world鈥檚 biggest poultry population and millions of backyard birds, is seen as crucial in the fight against bird flu.
China鈥檚 agriculture ministry was 鈥渘ot optimistic鈥� about winter and spring, when the virus is at its most contagious, the China Daily quoted Yin Chengjie, a vice minister of agriculture, as saying.
Methods of poultry breeding, slaughter, delivery, and processing still needed 鈥渞adical changes鈥�, and prevention measures were not fully carried out in some regions, Yin said. He called on local authorities to step up immunisation efforts and testing of birds at border areas and local wetlands.
China has now confirmed 27 human infections of bird flu since 2003, with 17 deaths.
Beggar鈥檚 chicken
State-run news agency Xinhua earlier reported that the son had had no contact with dead poultry and there had been no reported bird flu outbreak in poultry in Jiangsu province.
However, some reports suggest that both father and son, along with the mother and the son鈥檚 girlfriend had eaten chicken which was not fully cooked.
鈥淭o celebrate [the 24-year-old鈥檚] acceptance [to a school of continuing education], his mother and father took him and his girlfriend to Nanjing鈥檚 most bustling Confucian temple,鈥� translates Dan Silver, from singtaonet.com for the infectious diseases mailing list .
At the temple鈥檚 restaurant, the four of them ate , he says 鈥� a dish that is baked with a surrounding layer of mud.
鈥淎ccording to analyses, perhaps because the mud on the outside was too thick, the chicken inside was not thoroughly cooked,鈥� Silver says.
Transmission mystery
ProMed also notes that the son may have fallen ill first because he had been bitten by a dog weeks before and had undergone four out of five rabies vaccine shots before contracting bird flu, meaning that his immune system may have already been adversely affected.
But in a later posting, Craig Pringle, a ProMed moderator and emeritus professor at the University of Warwick, UK, points out that there is no evidence to link eating chicken with contracting bird flu.
鈥淭he thrust of the comment was to highlight the existence of possible sources of contact with poultry contrary to previous denials,鈥� he writes.
鈥淲e agree that there is no evidence for transmission of avian influenza virus by eating cooked, undercooked, or uncooked diseased poultry, but there is not much evidence for the transmission of infectivity by any specific route. Failure to transmit is the norm,鈥� Pringle concludes.
Bird Flu 鈥� Learn more about the flu pandemic that could kill millions in our continually updated special report.
