No further human cases of bird flu have been detected in
Guangzhou, which reported China's latest suspected human death from
the disease on Thursday, Minister of Health Gao Qiang said
yesterday.
Samples of the victim, a 32-year-old local resident, have been
sent to Beijing for a second check by the China Centre for Disease
Control and Prevention, Gao said.
The result of the tests may take some time, the minister said on
the sidelines of a plenary session of the National People's
Congress, which opened yesterday morning in Beijing.
He also reiterated that there was no human-to-human
communication of bird flu in China.
Close monitoring is being conducted on a local market where the
victim had visited, and on people who have had direct contact with
poultry.
"You can rest assured that no further cases have been reported,"
Gao told reporters.
The victim, surnamed Lao, started to develop symptoms of fever
and pneumonia on February 22. He had been staying at a nearby live
poultry slaughter site while carrying out surveys of the market,
according to an official statement.
The minister tried to allay concerns of the public, especially
those in Guangdong's neighbour Hong Kong, about the fallout of the
suspected case.
"We've informed the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions as well
as some countries of the situation," he said.
"After all, bird flu is not something that is only just
occurring, and people should remember that avian influenza appeared
in Hong Kong in 1997, and on the mainland in 2004."
Judging from cases in different parts of the country, the major
source of infection is believed to have come from migratory birds,
the minister said.
China has previously reported 14 human cases of bird flu, with
eight of them dead and the remainder making recoveries, statistics
of Gao's ministry showed.
(China Daily March 6, 2006)