Claims of human bird flu cases in China denied19:28 26 May 2005

NewScientist.com news service

Debora MacKenzie

Chinese officials have denied media reports that H5N1 bird flu has killed more than a 100 people in the west of the country.

A web-based Chinese-language news service called Boxun (Abundant News), which allows correspondents to freely post information on its site, reported on 25 May that 121 people in 18 villages in the sparsely-settled western province of Qinghai have died of bird flu, and more are ill. Some 1300 people, have been isolated, it reports.

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Xinhua says local authorities have “stepped up infectious disease control” by “closely monitoring and screening all pneumonia and flu-like cases among humans, fowl and livestock”.
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The media reports are said to have come from nine correspondents in Qinhai, who report that people connected to the cases have been forbidden to talk to outsiders. Boxun cautions that the reports cannot be independently verified, but says it hopes by drawing attention to them they can be further investigated.

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...they also report that there have been large scale outbreaks of unexplained deaths among livestock in the area.

China has never reported any human cases of H5N1. These have so far been reported only in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. ...

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In the past, the Chinese authorities denied that there were cases of SARS in Beijing when it later transpired there had been.