Jump in Suspected Bird Flu Cases in People

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia said on Monday a 20-year-old woman has died of bird flu and several other countries also reported more suspected cases in people.

Adding to the sense of alarm, researchers in Vietnam say the H5N1 avian flu virus has mutated allowing it to replicate more easily inside humans and other mammals. Taiwan said it had detected another bird flu strain that can infect people.

Avian influenza is known to have infected 125 people in Asia, killing 64, and is endemic in most poultry flocks in the region.

There are at least a dozen other suspected cases as governments in Asia struggle to control outbreaks in poultry to prevent more people from catching the virus, which experts fear could trigger a pandemic.

Vietnam and China said on Monday they had had more suspicious cases in people, while Thailand said a toddler confirmed infected with bird flu was recovering.

In the Indonesian capital, tests confirmed the woman died from H5N1, a Health Ministry official said and that tests were also being conducted on samples from a 13 year-old girl.

Both died over the weekend in the Sulianti Saroso Hospital, Jakarta's hospital for treating bird flu patients. Initial tests on the girl were negative.

Earlier, a hospital official said a 16-year-old boy had tested positive but Hariadi Wibisono, a senior official at the Health Ministry, said that was not the case.

Final test results for the woman and a 16-year-old girl who died last week have to be confirmed by a laboratory in Hong Kong.

The laboratory, affiliated with the World Health Organization, has confirmed five people have died of bird flu in Indonesia. But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono put the toll higher, telling a news conference on Monday seven of the 11 people who had contracted avian influenza in Indonesia had died.

HIGHLY VIRULENT IN MAMMALS

In Vietnam, scientists at the Ho Chi Minh Pasteur Institute who have been studying the genetic make up of H5N1 samples taken from people and poultry said it had undergone several mutations.

"There has been a mutation allowing the virus to (replicate) effectively in mammal tissue and become highly virulent," the institute said on its Web site at www.pasteur-hcm.org.vn.

State media said bird flu might have infected two more people in Vietnam, where 42 people have died from the virus since the latest outbreak in Asia began in late 2003.

State newspapers said on Monday a student was being tested in hospital after eating chicken eggs, while a 78-year-old woman died from pneumonia in central Quang Binh province on Friday.

China is probing a possible human case of bird flu in northeastern Liaoning province, the WHO said on Monday.

More than 10 million birds have been culled in Liaoning, where a female poultry worker has bird flu-like symptoms, said Roy Wadia, the WHO's China spokesman.

The WHO is also sending a team this week to the southern province of Hunan to investigate three pneumonia cases. One of the cases, a 12-year-old girl, has died.

China has not confirmed any cases in people and bird flu remains hard for humans to catch. But scientists fear the H5N1 virus will mutate into a form that passes easily among people. If it does so, millions could die. The disease has so far killed half the people it has infected and governments are stockpiling anti-viral drugs that are believed to limit the effects of H5N1 if taken early enough.

By far the most sought-after is Tamiflu made by Swiss company Roche. But Japanese subsidiary Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. said on Monday two teenaged boys exhibited abnormal behavior that led to their deaths after taking the drug.

Shinichi Watanabe, deputy director of the health ministry's safety division, said the ministry had ordered Chugai in May last year to include in the literature accompanying the drug a list of psychological and neurological disorders that could arise as side effects.

Michael Richardson, a senior research fellow of the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies in Singapore, said bird flu was a major threat to mankind.

"A pandemic triggered by H5N1 could become a fearsome insurgency against human health, with the potential to be far more lethal than terrorism," he said in a briefing paper on Monday.

Perhaps just as worrying, Taiwan said on Monday it had found another highly pathogenic strain of avian flu, H7N3, in droppings left by a migratory bird and is carrying out tests to see if the virus has spread to nearby poultry farms.

Like H5N1, the H7N3 strain can infect humans, said an official at the Council of Agriculture.