China rejects human-to-human avian flu report

The study, published in British medical magazine The Lancet this week, said a 4-year-old man was likely to have infected his father with H5N1 before dying, raising the specter of a feared flu pandemic.

But health ministry spokesman Mao Qun’an said there was no clear evidence to support the findings.

“So far no evidence has been found in China to support the idea that the H5N1 virus can easily pass from one person to another,” he said, according to Xinhua news agency Friday.

The case, in the eastern city of Nanjing in December, is one of a handful worldwide in which the H5N1 virus is suspected to have spread from one person to another.

To date, however, all such cases have been what scientists call “limited, non sustained, person-to-person transmission,” meaning that contagion only occurs under specific circumstances.

The vast majority of the known 378 human cases of H5N1 bird flu since 2003 were spread by domestic or wild fowl, according to the World Health Organization. More than 60 percent proved fatal.

Experts fear that the H5N1 virus could mutate after infecting one human into a more contagious form, as occurred during at least three flu pandemics in the 20th century.

An estimated 20 to 40 million people perished in the so-called “Spanish flu” of 1918. Since 2003, there have been around 200 bird flu fatalities, mainly in Asia.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

PrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email