Asia, Poultry | 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.

More than 50 percent of patients infected with a new type of bird flu in China had no contact with poultry, the World Health Organization said on Friday, further raising questions about whether the virus was transmitted between humans.

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.

China defended its curbs on exports of industrial raw materials against unfair-trade complaints by the United States and Europe and announced Wednesday it has filed its own challenge to a U.S. ban on imports of Chinese poultry.