Monday

Claims of human bird flu cases in China denied

This year is going to be one hell of a Flu season. Not good!

Chinese officials have denied media reports that H5N1 bird flu has killed more than a 100 people in the west of the country. A web-based Chinese-language news service called Boxun (Abundant News), which allows correspondents to freely post information on its site, reported on 25 May that 121 people in 18 villages in the sparsely-settled western province of Qinghai have died of bird flu, and more are ill. Some 1300 people, have been isolated, it reports. But on Thursday the official Xinhua news agency denied any human infections with H5N1 bird flu in the region. No unexplained pneumonia or flu among people who had contact with birds that carried H5N1 has been reported, it says. An expert team was dispatched to Qinghai soon after the strain was confirmed in wild geese at a nature reserve – a development reported earlier this week.

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