China's latest human case of bird
flu in south China's Guangdong Province has been showing signs
of recovery,sources with the local health authorities said Wednesday.
X-rays showed the shadow on the patient's lungs
had diminished, but he was still critically ill, said the Health
Bureau of Shenzhen City.
The 31-year-old patient surnamed Jiang was confirmed
by the Ministry of Health to have contracted bird flu on
June 15, bringing China's total human infections to 19.
Jiang had been undergoing treatment for eight
days in a local hospital, which had the most advanced intensive
care unit in the city, said the bureau.
Meanwhile, medical observation of 98 people who
had close contact with him had found no suspected symptoms, such
as pneumonia or bird flu-like symptoms, said a statement from the
Shenzhen Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Bird flu has killed 12 Chinese since last year.
The disease has also infected 228 people and killed 130 worldwide,
according to figures from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Experts fear the H5N1 strain
of the virus could mutate to become transmissible among people,
causing a global pandemic. To date, most human cases had direct
or indirect contact with infected birds.
Indonesian Health Minister Siti Sufari Fadillah
announced Wednesday that the investigation conducted by a WHO team
on the world's largest cluster death of bird flu cases in the country's
North Sumatra province found the virus was transmitted from animal
to human, not from human to human.
Seven people in the same extended family died
from the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus
last month, followed by the deaths of two siblings in Jakarta, which
the minister described as a cluster.
It was the biggest reported cluster of deaths,
raising international concern on possible human transmission in
Indonesia.
Senior Chinese health expert Shu Yuelong said
Wednesday there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission in
China, but warned the evolution of the virus was unpredictable.
No trace of human influenza had been found in
the gene of the virus extracted from Chinese bird flu patients either,
said Shu, director of the National Influenza Center under the Chinese
Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
