Latest Global spread of H5N1 Stories

Experts say flu season has made a slow start this winter, with widespread illness only being reported in Virginia and New Jersey, the Associated Press reported.Dr. Nancy Cox, influenza chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a meeting of flu specialists on Monday it has been kind of a "ho-hum year."However, doctors say influenza usually ramps up in February, long after many people have forgotten the fall's campaigns to get vaccinated. Last year, there was even a spike...

The sixth case of a human infected with bird flu in China has been found, a local health official said Monday. The man in southwest China's Guizhou province was in stable condition, and none of the people with whom he has had contact has fallen ill so far, Xinhua reported. The local health official said 26 people were no longer under surveillance Sunday. The patient became ill Jan. 15 in Guiyang City and tested positive for the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, the Chinese state-run news...

China's Health Ministry reported on Saturday the country's fourth death from the H5N1 virus.  The 31-year-old victim, a woman from Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region in western China, died Friday. The country's official Xinhua News Agency cited China's deputy director of health, Wang Xiaoyan, as saying that the woman had been to a live poultry market before she fell ill on Jan. 10.  A teenage boy in southwest China, a woman in eastern China and a woman in Beijing also died from...

Chinese officials say a 16-year-old boy is hospitalized with avian influenza, the fourth case of bird flu reported in China this month. The boy fell ill on January 8 in Guizhou Province and is hospitalized in Huaihua City in critical condition. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the patients tested positive for the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. The patient had contact with poultry, Xinhua, China's state-run news service reported Tuesday. A two-year-old girl remains...

A 16-year-old boy in central Hunan province is badly ill after contracting the H5N1 birdflu virus, the third case reported by Chinese health authorities.The teenage student entered a hospital in Hunan on January 16 and the province disease control center confirmed he was infected with the H5N1 virus, according to the Ministry of Health's website.The official statement said the boy's condition is critical and that he previously had "contact with dead poultry," but it did not say...

A 2-year-old girl who tested positive for bird flu is China's second confirmed case of the virus this month, the World Health Organization said Sunday. A 19-year-old woman in Beijing, in Hebei Province, died Jan. 5 after handling ducks bought at a local market, CNN reported. The 2-year-old fell ill Jan. 7 in neighboring Hunan Province, reported Xinhua, China's state-run news agency. No details were given of how the girl contracted the bird flu virus, officially known as H5N1. Thirty cases of...

The younger sister of a Vietnamese teen who was the nation's first confirmed avian flu death this year also died last week after suffering similar symptoms of an H5N1 virus infection.Both girls had eaten chicken and duck raised on the family farm.Truong Thi Mau, director of the Ba Thuoc district hospital, said the girl likely died from bird flu."We suspect that it was bird flu that caused her death," Mau told Reuters in a telephone interview from Ba Thuoc, about 100 miles south of...

The deadly H5N1 virus, known as bird flu, has resurfaced in poultry in Hong Kong for the first time in six years, reawakening fears of possible threats to human health. In December, two years after cases of the virus peaked, reports of a resurgence began to arise in the Middle East. Cases have were reported in India, Bangladesh, Vietnam Egypt, Cambodia and China during the last month of 2008. The United Nations said improved efforts to monitor and quarantine the virus have helped to calm...

A state-run newspaper reported on Sunday that bird flu has resurfaced in poultry in northern Vietnam after many months without any cases, killing ducks and chickens at two farms.On Saturday, Animal health officials confirmed the H5N1 virus had killed several birds among a flock of more than 100 ducks in Thai Nguyen City, 50 miles north of Hanoi, the Ho Chi Minh City Communist Youth league-run Tuoi Tre newspaper said.The report said that officials had also detected the virus in dead chickens...

Authorities in Hong Kong Tuesday ordered about 80,000 chickens killed after discovering dozens of birds had died of bird flu at a nearby farm. CNN reported that the order requires all chickens within about a 2-mile radius of the farm where the dead chickens were discovered Monday to be culled. We have discovered up to 60 dead chickens in that farm. After a series of tests, we have confirmed this morning that the chickens did die from the H5 virus, said Dr. York Chow, Hong Kong's food and...