February 11, 2009

China's Health Ministry is puzzled by eight human cases of bird flu in January which appeared independent of any known case in birds, a spokesman said on Tuesday (Feb 10).

Since January, five Chinese have died from H5N1 in remote regions without any previous reports of the virus in birds on the mainland.

Dead birds found in Hong Kong were tested positive for the H5N1 strain this month, leading experts to question whether bird flu is widely present but undetected in China.

Later on Tuesday, the Ministry of Agriculture said there had been an H5N1 outbreak among poultry in Hotan, in the far western region of Xinjiang, which had killed 519 birds.

The official Xinhua news agency has reported that authorities have culled another 13,218 birds and the outbreak is under control.

In eastern Jiangsu province, a bird flu case was detected through sampling this winter. Thereafter, China regularly conducts random sampling and culls birds.

The Agriculture Ministry has said that its vaccination campaign has successfully prevented the widespread incidence of bird flu.

Hospitals are also urged to increase their efforts at early detection and testing for bird flu.

While H5N1 rarely infects people, experts fear a pandemic would occur where a mutated form of the virus could be easily spread among people.