Health, Bird Flu | featured news

Chinese scientists have for the first time found strong evidence of how humans got infected with a new strain of bird flu: from chickens at a live market. In a small study of four patients who caught the new H7N9 virus, Chinese scientists compared swabs from birds at live markets in eastern China to virus samples from patients. The scientists found the virus from one patient was nearly identical to one found in a chicken. The research was published online Thursday in the journal Lancet.

The death toll in China's bird flu crisis stood at 10 on Friday, as Hong Kong authorities announced plans to test all poultry imported from the mainland.

A strain of bird flu that has been found in humans for the first time in eastern China is not a cause for panic, the World Health Organization said on Monday, as the number of people infected rose to 21, with six deaths.

With confirmation that a sixth person has died from a mysterious avian-borne virus, Chinese officials escalated their response on Friday, advising people to avoid live poultry, dispatching virologists to chicken farms across the country and slaughtering more than 20,000 birds at a wholesale market in Shanghai where the virus, known as H7N9, was detected in a pigeon.

A middle-aged man who transported poultry for a living and another unidentified person have died from a new strain of bird flu, bringing the death toll to five among 14 confirmed cases in China, the government and state media reported Thursday. The 48-year-old man, who died in Shanghai, is one of several among the infected believed to have had direct contact with fowl. Until recently, the virus, called H7N9, was not known to infect humans.

Chinese authorities tried to calm spreading health concerns Wednesday after a third person was reported to have died from a new type of bird flu. The emergence in China of the H7N9 strain of avian flu — a total of nine cases have been reported since it was revealed last weekend — are troubling because the strain has not previously been found in humans.

The first human case of bird flu in seven years has been diagnosed in Hong Kong, health officials said Thursday, urging the public to take precautions.