LAB tests have confirmed that a feared strain of bird flu caused at least three cases of a severe respiratory disease in Vietnam, the World Health Organization announced on Tuesday. Since October, 13 children and one adult with the disease have been admitted to hospitals in Hanoi and nearby areas. The adult was the mother of one of the children. Of the 14 patients, 12 have died.
Crucially, the WHO says there is no evidence that the avian influenza, a nasty strain known as H5N1, is spreading from person to person. The victims most likely caught it directly from birds. The virus has already killed 40,000 chickens in the country. There has also been an outbreak on a chicken farm in Japan, though no human cases have been reported there.
In 1997, H5N1 infected two people in Hong Kong, killing one (91av, 14 December 2002, p 36). All 1.5 million chickens in the territory were slaughtered to halt its spread. The big fear is that the bird virus could mutate or pick up genes that enable it to spread from person to person as easily as human flu strains. “This is really worrying,” says flu expert Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
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