January 2, 2014

The H7N9 bird flu virus is spreading further beyond mainland China with the second human case of the deadly virus was confirmed in Taiwan on Tuesday (Dec 31).

An 86-year-old man, a resident from China's south-eastern province of Jiangsu who travelled to Taiwan in a tour group earlier this month, fell ill on December 19, two days after he entered Taiwan, the island's Centres for Disease Control said in a statement. The man has been hospitalised since last Tuesday (Dec 31), the statement said. It didn't say what condition the man is in, and where and how he contracted the virus.

The Centres for Disease Control said that the risks and threats of the pandemic are rising.

In April, a 53-year-old Taiwanese businessman fell ill after he returned from China's Jiangsu province. The man didn't have contact with poultry there, the Centres said at that time.

When China's state media revealed that two people in Shanghai died after being infected with the bird flu virus the previous month, the H7N9 strain was confirmed to have made the jump from birds to humans for the first time in March. Other deaths followed soon, prompting officials to shut down meat markets and slaughter poultry in several mainland Chinese cities. However, the WHO said earlier there has been no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus.