Beijing (dpa) - World Health Organization experts have arrived in
China to study the spread of H7N9 avian influenza and possible human
transmission of the virus, a WHO official said on Friday.
Chinese and international experts suspected human transmission of
H7N9 "in very rare caes," Michael O'Leary, WHO's China
representative, told reporters.
The WHO team would spend a week in China, travelling to areas
where infections were reported and making recommendations to the
government, O'Leary said.
The experts would focus on three clusters of infections in eastern
China, including a father and two sons, he said.
The two sons of an 87-year-old Shanghai man who died of H7N9 were
both treated for severe pneumonia, from which one of them died.
Officials said tests on the sons in early April proved negative
for H7N9, but experts are re-examining the three cases for possible
human transmission of the virus.
"It is not rare that with animal-to-human [transmission] you also
have rare human-to-human transmissions," O'Leary said.
"Human-to-human transmission, in theory, is possible, but is
highly sporadic," Feng Zijian, head of the Chinese government's
emergency disease control centre, said earlier this week.
China reported 87 confirmed H7N9 infections, including 17 deaths,
by Thursday.
Most of the cases were in Shanghai and the neighbouring provinces
of Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
O'Leary said evidence so far suggested that poultry were a vehicle
of transmission to people, but experts had not confirmed a "strong
link."
Chinese scientists found no evidence of direct transmission from
wild birds to people, state media said on Friday.
But the government still suspended sales of wild birds at animal
markets from Thursday and ordered zoos to prevent close contact
between humans and animals, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Ane earlier report by the Caixin financial newspaper said
microbiologists had identified possible viral mutation from wild
birds that migrated from South Korea and mingled with ducks and
chickens in eastern China.
Copyright 2013 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH