SHANGHAI: Four more people in China have been infected with a new strain of bird flu, a local government said yesterday, bringing the country’s total to seven.
Three women and one man had contracted H7N9 avian influenza, the health bureau in the eastern province of Jiangsu said.
Two men have already died in Shanghai, while a woman from the eastern province of Anhui is critically ill.
The National Health and Family Planning Commission said that two men, aged 87 and 27, died in Shanghai in early March.
The presence of the virus in the victims was confirmed last Friday.
“To date the investigation showed no link between the three cases, but the investigation is continuing,” the panel said.
It said that 88 people who had been in contact with the victims were being monitored.
Shanghai’s health bureau has ordered hospitals to strengthen surveillance of respiratory illness cases.
“They are taking the measures necessary,” the bureau said.
The woman from Anhui had contact with birds, while the younger man in Shanghai worked butchering and selling meat, state-backed Health News said on its website, suggesting a route for transmission.
In Geneva, World Health Organisation played down fears over a strain of bird flu which has killed two people in China, but said it was crucial to find out how the virus infected humans.
“It’s the first time that H7N9 was found in humans,” the UN health agency’s spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said, referring to the deadly strain of avian influenza.
Agencies
