China told to step up bird flu checks amid human cases

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) has called on China to increase surveillance of a deadly strain of bird flu after a recent spike in human infections.

A third of all human cases of the H5N6 variant – which has a fatality rate of 50 per cent – have been reported in the past three months, and half of the 47 known human cases have been reported in the past year.

A WHO spokesman said: “Wider geographical surveillance in the China affected areas and nearby areas is urgently required to better understand the risk and the recent increase of spillover to humans.”

The Chinese Centre for Disease Control has been tracking the outbreak and last month reported two new cases in Guangxi between February and July, warning that the geographic spread and diversity of the virus “pose a serious threat to the poultry industry and human health”.

“The increasing trend of human infection with avian influenza virus has become an important public health issue that cannot be ignored,” the researchers added, stressing that the virus was evolving and there needed to be more surveillance of “drug-resistant strains and novel variants”.

While the overall number of cases remains low and there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, the fatality rate of H5N6 is high: it can cause serious illness in humans of any age and kills about half of those it infects.

One of the cases in China, a 61-yearold woman who was admitted to hospital in July, said she had not had any contact with poultry before her illness.

However, the WHO said there was no evidence yet that H5N6 could spread between humans and the risk remained low.