A five-year-old boy became Thailand's second bird flu fatality in two months, while Vietnam announced two new outbreaks and China its fifth human case amid concern that infection rates could soar this winter.
Thai health authorities said yesterday that lab tests showed the boy died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which international experts fear could trigger a human pandemic if it mutates into a form easily passed between people.
The boy fell ill with fever, stomach pains and vomiting on Nov. 25 at his home in a district of Nakhon Nayok province district about 70km northeast of the capital of Bangkok, Public Health Minister Phinij Jarusombat said. He was hospitalized nine days later and died on Wednesday.
Health officials believe the boy had contact with the feces of chickens belonging to an uncle living next door. But his parents failed to give doctors a "clear history of his contact with chickens," Phinij said in a statement.
Doctors had treated him as a normal pneumonia case until just hours before he died, after bird flu suspicions were aroused.
The cause of death was not yet confirmed by the WHO.
The boy's case was Thailand's fourth reported infection since October, and the second death. They were Thailand's first new human cases of the virus in a year, and coincided with fresh outbreaks in poultry in several parts of the country.
In Vietnam, the country worst hit by bird flu, the Agriculture Ministry yesterday reported new outbreaks in two more provinces which had killed or forced authorities to destroy some 10,600 chickens and ducks.
Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat urged people not to avoid eating poultry because of bird flu fears, which he blamed for US$44 million in losses each month in the industry.
Meanwhile, the official Xinhua news agency reported that a farmer in northeast China tested positive for the H5N1 virus, but recovered after being hospitalized.
The 31-year-old woman, surnamed Liu, fell ill on Oct. 30 in Heishan County in Liaoning Province, making her the country's fifth confirmed human case, Xinhua said.
She suffered a fever and pneumonia-like symptoms, and developed breathing problems after she was hospitalized, but responded to treatment and she was discharged on Nov. 29.
Meanwhile, a report from the US' Congressional Budget Office presumes a pandemic of bird flu could cause a serious recession of the US economy, with immediate costs of between US$500 billion and US$675 billion, according to two estimates released on Thursday.
Both assume the H5N1 avian influenza now destroying flocks of poultry across Asia and parts of Europe makes the jump into humans and causes serious disease.
So far, H5N1 has killed 69 people and infected 135, but world health experts say it is very close to mutating into a form that easily passes among people.
If it does, it would likely closely resemble the 1918 pandemic strain of flu that killed anywhere between 20 million and 100 million people during World War I, both reports say. This means 30 percent of the population would be infected and more than 2 percent would die, the report says.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion