A 27-year-old man, who died on Monday morning in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, tested positive to the H5N1 strain of bird flu, a doctor at the city-based Pasteur Institute told Xinhua on Monday.

"The young man from Binh Phuoc province was admitted to the provincial hospital first, then to the Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City. He and a 23-year-old man from the K'ho ethnic minority group in Lam Dong province tested positive to H5N1 on Sunday," said Phan Van Tu at the institute.

The institute took their samples at an early stage, so they tested positive to H5N1, said he, adding that samples taken later by the hospital tested negative to the virus. The 23-year-man is under treatment at the hospital.

The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health said that as of Sunday, at least eight people admitted to hospitals in the city were infected with the H5N1 strain, six of them died.

(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2004)