Avian Flu Spreading Faster Than Expected Across China

February 1, 2004

BEIJING, Feb. 1 -- The deadly avian influenza appears to be spreading faster than expected across China, as authorities reported five more suspected outbreaks on Sunday, including one in far western Xinjiang province, hundreds of miles from the duck farm in the southeast where the virus first appeared in the country a week ago.

The announcement brings to 14 the total number of places in China with confirmed or suspected outbreaks of the bird flu and came as Beijing was also struggling to prevent severe acute respiratory syndrome from resurfacing and facing questions about its late disclosure of a fourth SARS patient in southern Guangdong province.

The World Health Organization called for an urgent investigation into the latest SARS case while warning again that the Chinese government's chance of containing the bird flu virus was quickly disappearing.

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has already prompted the slaughter of millions of chickens and ducks in 10 Asian countries and passed from fowl to humans in Vietnam and Thailand, killing at least eight people. There is no conclusive evidence that the virus can be transmitted from one person to another, but scientists have warned that if it mutates and develops that ability, a global health crisis could follow.

The government said again Sunday that it has not received any reports of bird flu infections among humans in China. The WHO said the Health Ministry denied a report in Hong Kong media that a patient in the Shanghai area had been diagnosed with the disease.

[In Hanoi, the WHO said that two Vietnamese sisters who died of bird flu may have caught the disease from their brother, the Associated Press reported. If confirmed, it would be the first known case of human-to-human transmission of the virus during the current outbreak sweeping Asia.

[The source of the two sisters' infection has not yet been conclusively identified, said Bob Dietz, a WHO spokesman in Hanoi. But the U.N. health organization that that it "considers that limited human-to-human transmission, from the brother to the sisters, is one possible explanation."

[The WHO said it saw no evidence of "efficient" transmission of the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus between people "in Vietnam or elsewhere."]

Health experts are especially worried about the spread of bird flu in China - the world's second-largest producer of poultry - because the vast majority of chickens and ducks here are raised on household farms, where hundreds of millions of peasants live in close proximity to their livestock.

The Chinese government has promised an aggressive effort to contain the disease and has already closed down poultry processing factories in the three provinces where outbreaks have been confirmed - Hubei, Hunan and Guangxi - and banned poultry exports from a total of six provinces.

State media reported new suspected outbreaks Sunday night in Zhejiang, Hubei, Yunnan, Henan and Xinjiang provinces. One state newspaper described farm workers fleeing the site of a previously reported outbreak after large numbers of chicken started dropping dead.

Local authorities are slaughtering all poultry within two miles of suspected outbreaks and quarantining and vaccinating birds within three miles to contain the disease. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last week promised compensation for farmers forced to cull poultry and called for timely updates from all affected areas.

WHO spokesman Roy Wadia said the organization is encouraged by the commitment of China's top leadership, but remained worried about the country's weak network for monitoring animal diseases. "The surveillance system in many parts of China are weak, and it's entirely probably these latest outbreaks were there for a while before they were picked up and reported," he said.

Wadia said the WHO is also worried about whether local authorities are adopting safety measures to prevent the virus from spreading to the workers conducting the poultry slaughters or contaminating water, soil or the air. In addition, he said, the WHO is still waiting for more information from the Chinese government about the vaccination process being used to stop the spread of the virus.

Last week, a British scientific weekly, New Scientist, argued that government-sponsored bird vaccinations in southern China may have inadvertently caused the latest outbreak across Asia. The journal said Chinese farmers used a vaccine that might have allowed birds carrying the virus to transmit it without being detected or helped stronger strains of the virus to survive.

A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the report was "completely inaccurate, without proof and moreover does not respect science.

China is also facing questions about its announcement Saturday that a 40-year-old doctor and hospital director in Guangzhou had contracted and recovered from SARS. He is the fourth confirmed SARS patient in China this season. Health experts are worried because no source of infection has been identified for any of the patients.

State media said the doctor developed symptoms on Jan. 7 and was diagnosed with pneumonia on Jan. 14, but was not properly quarantined until Jan. 16 nor classified a suspected SARS case until Jan. 26. The WHO said it learned of the case only on Friday.

Wadia said the organization is concerned bout the delay as well as the fact that authorities have only tracked down 48 people who have had contact with the man. "Given his profession and his work setting, there should be far more contacts," he said. "There are all sorts of queries that need to be answered about this case."

The first known case of SARS appeared in Guangdong in November 2002. China sought to cover up the outbreak, allowing the virus to spread to nearly 30 countries around the world, infecting more than 8,000 people and killing 774, including 349 in mainland China, before subsiding in July.

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