Beijing (dpa) - The H7N9 strain of bird flu was found in a
4-year-old boy in Beijing displaying none of the flu-like symptoms
previously associated with the pathogen, a news report said Monday.
The child was tested late Sunday as part of a routine screening of
people in contact with fowl in the capital, Xinhua news agency said.
At the weekend a 7-year-old girl in Beijing became the first
reported case of the new strain outside the Shanghai area.
The girl's family sold a chicken to a neighbour of the boy found
to be infected Sunday, local health officials were quoted by Xinhua
as saying.
The new strain, which has killed 13 of 60 cases since it was
identified in March, has previously only been found in people direcly
exposed to poultry, with no documented human-to-human transmission.
The infected boy was under surveillance in a Beijing hospital, the
report said.
Copyright 2013 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH