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China reports new bird flu outbreak Thailand probes first human infection

AFP, Beijing
China yesterday reported its eighth outbreak of bird flu in less than a month, as Thai authorities rushed to investigate the first confirmed human infection in the capital Bangkok.
China's latest outbreak, which killed 2,500 birds, occurred in two villages in Jingshan county, part of Hubei province in the country's vast rural interior, the agriculture ministry said in a statement on its website.
Health officials culled more than 31,300 birds on farms within a radius of three km from the outbreak, according to the ministry.
Hubei is squeezed in between Anhui and Hunan, two other provinces where avian flu has been confirmed since last month, when the virus suddenly returned to China after a lengthy lull.
China has so far not reported a single confirmed human case of bird flu, although official fears are mounting that people might have been infected.
Health and agricultural departments in the northeastern province of Liaoning said Friday a female chicken farmer was undergoing further tests to determine whether she had bird flu, making her the fourth suspected human case in China.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said its knowledge of the Liaoning case was limited to media reports and information on the health ministry's website.
"That's all the information we have right now," said Roy Wadia, a Beijingbased WHO spokesman. "We're certainly keeping an eye on it through the information provided by the Ministry of Health."
The details of the three other suspected cases -- including a 12-year-old girl who died -- were being investigated Saturday by WHO experts working with Chinese officials, he said.
It could be at least one or two weeks before the WHO will be able to say with certainty if these are human cases of bird flu in China, he said.
In Thailand, authorities Saturday rushed to investigate the home of an 18-month-old boy who was diagnosed with bird flu, in the first case of the disease found in the capital Bangkok.
The house where the boy contracted the virus had two chickens and one fighting cock, which died on October 31 but were only reported to authorities after the boy fell sick, officials said.
The public health ministry said the boy fell ill on November 1 and went to hospital on November 3 with a runny nose, fever and coughing.
The boy's 65-year-old grandmother has also shown symptoms of the disease, but so far has tested negative. Doctors were awaiting the results of further tests, expected by Sunday.
The boy is the 21st case of bird flu diagnosed in Thailand since the H5N1 virus was first detected in the country in January 2004. Thirteen of those cases have been fatal.
The events in China and Thailand helped shape the agenda as officials gathered for annual meetings of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum in the South Korean city of Busan.
An official involved in Saturday's talks said discussions would focus on howApec countries would respond to a pandemic and plans for an Apec-wide mock exercise simulating a human-to-human outbreak.
At the other end of the Asian continent, the Gulf region was reeling from its first discovery of bird flu.
One of two birds discovered in the Gulf state of Kuwait that were stricken with avian flu carried the deadly H5N1 strain, an agriculture official said Friday.
He said a second bird, a falcon found at Kuwait airport that had been brought in from an Asian nation, was found to have the milder H5N2 strain.
Scientists fear that the H5N1 strain, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since late 2003, could mutate and combine with human flu variants, possibly creating a global pandemic.
At present, H5N1's lethal stretch to humans is limited. It is picked up by people who are in close proximity to infected birds, breathing in virus-laden nasal secretions or pulverised feces.