(Updates number of infected, death toll)
BEIJING, April 14 (Reuters) - Two people in the central
Chinese province of Henan have been infected by a new strain of
avian influenza, the first cases found in the region, while the
death toll has risen to 13 from a total of 60 infections after
two more deaths in Shanghai.
One of the Henan victims, a 34-year old man in the city of
Kaifeng, is now critically ill in hospital, while the other, a
65-year old farmer from Zhoukou, is stable. The two cases do not
appear to be connected.
A total of 19 people in close contact with the two new
victims were under observation but had shown no signs of
infection, state news agency Xinhua said.
Another four cases have been confirmed in eastern Zhejiang,
Xinhua said on Sunday, bringing the total number in the province
to 15. None of the 483 people in close contact with the victims
has presented any symptoms.
Three more victims were identified in Shanghai, China's
business hub, bringing the total number of cases in the city to
24, with a total of nine deaths, state media said.
Three cases have now been reported outside the original
clusters in eastern China, including one in the capital Beijing,
but there is nothing out of the ordinary so far, the China
representative of the World Health Organization said.
"There's no way to predict how it'll spread but it's not
surprising if we have new cases in different places like we do
in Beijing," Michael O'Leary told reporters.
On Saturday, the China Centre for Disease Control and
Prevention confirmed that a seven year-old child in the capital
of Beijing had been infected by the H7N9 bird flu virus, the
first case to be reported outside of the Yangtze river delta
region in east China, where the new strain emerged last month.
The child's parents work in the poultry trade.
Investigators are trying to ascertain the source amid fears
that it could cause a deadly pandemic similar to Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, which killed about one in
10 of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.
China has been anxious to avoid a repeat of the panic of
2003 by promising total transparency, and O'Leary said his
organisation has been "very pleased" about the way information
was being shared.
China's health ministry said on Saturday that there is still
no indication of human-to-human transmission of the virus, which
has killed 13 people in Shanghai and the provinces of Zhejiang,
Jiangsu and Anhui.
"That's a key factor in this situation," said O'Leary. "As
far as we know, all the cases are individually infected in a
sporadic and not connected way."
The husband of a H7N9 victim in Shanghai was recently
infected, but O'Leary said there was no cause for alarm.
"If there's only very rare cases ... That's different from
the ease of transmission from person to person. It's that ease
of transmission that we are concerned about, and there's no
evidence of that yet."
(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee and David Stanway; Editing by Nick
Macfie and Daniel Magnowski)
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