Free Republic

China has recorded the first human infection with the H3N8 strain of bird flu, the country's health authority said on Tuesday (April 26), but said the risk of it spreading among people was low. A four-year-old boy from central Henan province was found to have been infected with the variant after developing a fever and other symptoms on April 5. No close contacts were infected with the virus, the National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement.

The Chinese Ministry of Health has confirmed on Aug 8 that the country's first human case of H5N1 bird flu occurred two years earlier than previously thought, in November 2003. A letter published by eight Chinese scientists on June 22 in the New England Journal of Medicine said that the bird flu virus had been isolated in a 24-year-old man who died in Beijing in 2003. The man, surnamed Shi, became ill with pneumonia and respiratory disease in November 2003 and died four days after being hospitalized. China was then in the aftermath of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and...