Tuesday, August 08, 2006
China confirms human bird flu case from 2003
China confirmed today that the country’s first human case of the H5N1 bird flu virus was in November 2003, two years earlier than originally reported.
The case had spurred questions about whether there might have been other human H5N1 infections in China prior to what had been its first reported human case, near the end of last year.
Eight Chinese researchers published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in June saying a 24-year-old man, who was admitted to hospital in November 2003 for respiratory distress and pneumonia and later died, had been infected with H5N1.
His virus samples genetically resembled H5N1 viruses taken from Chinese chickens in various provinces in 2004, the eight experts said.
China’s Health Ministry confirmed the case on today by “parallel laboratory tests” carried out in cooperation with the World Health Organisation, Xinhua news agency said in a brief report.
The scientists’ findings were one of the clearest indications yet that the virus might have been brewing for much longer in the vast country than what had been reported.