A nine-year-old girl has become China's 10th human fatality from the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu, the government said yesterday.
The girl died on Monday in Zhejiang, the Health Ministry said.
Elsewhere, reports that a cat contracted bird flu and has not fallen ill could mean the virus is adapting to mammals and poses a potentially higher risk to humans, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Tuesday.
Michael Perdue, a scientist with the WHO's global influenza program, said more studies were needed on infections in cats, including how they shed the virus.
But Perdue said there was no current evidence that cats were hidden carriers of a virus which can wipe out poultry flocks in the space of 48 hours and occasionally infects people.
The death of the girl in China occurred despite a massive effort to inoculate vast poultry flocks against the virus and warnings to the public not to handle dead wild birds that might be infected.
The government said earlier that the girl had visited the home of relatives whose chickens died while she was there, but it said the cause of her infection was still under investigation.
The girl, identified only by the surname, You, fell ill on Feb. 10 and was hospitalized with pneumonia and fever.
People who had close contact with her were under medical observation but none has shown symptoms, according to the government.
Bird flu has devastated poultry flocks in China, and the agriculture minister warned last month that the country could face a massive outbreak in coming months.
Outbreaks in poultry occurred last year in 32 areas throughout China, killing 163,100 chickens, ducks and other fowl, and authorities destroyed 22.6 million more birds, according to the Agriculture Ministry.
Most human infections have been linked to direct contact with sick poultry. But experts warn that the virus could mutate into a form that could be easily transmitted between people, possibly sparking a global pandemic that could kill millions.
Austria said on Monday that a cat in an animal sanctuary in the southern city of Graz had tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus but had yet to show any symptoms of the disease.
However, the virus can take up to a week to strike and perhaps the cat in Austria could still develop clinical signs, according to Perdue.
"We have to follow-up with laboratory studies to see if it [the virus] changed genetically and is not causing clinical signs," Perdue said.
"If it is true, it would imply the virus has changed significantly," he said.
The virus has killed 95 people in East Asia and the Middle East since late 2003. Most of the victims contracted the disease directly from sick poultry, but experts fear the virus could mutate and spread easily among people, sparking a pandemic which could kill millions.
Animals carrying H5N1 without showing any signs of ill health could make it harder to detect and contain bird flu. The longer the virus remains dormant in a mammal, without it getting sick or dying, the greater the risk of it also mutating into a more dangerous form.
"The longer it stays in mammals one would assume it is more likely to be adapted to mammals, as opposed to staying in birds. If the virus obtains all the mutations needed to transmit easily between mammals it could imply higher risk to humans," Perdue said.
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