China ups toll of birds killed by flu

BEIJING – Bird flu killed more than five times as many migratory birds as previously reported in China’s west during an outbreak of unprecedented scale, an agricultural official said Friday.

But he denied reports of human cases of the disease.

Jia Youling, director of the Veterinary Bureau of the Agriculture Ministry, also confirmed hundreds of cattle with foot-and-mouth disease have been slaughtered near Beijing since early May. He insisted the case was handled properly despite the government’s failure to announce it sooner.

The scarce information released about both disease outbreaks had fueled concern about a possible cover-up and rumors on Web sites that as many as 120 people had died of the avian flu.

More than 1,000 bar-headed geese, great black-headed gulls and other birds found this month in the western province of Qinghai died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, Jia said.

“It is a rarity for such large-scale deaths to occur, whether in China or other parts of the world. We have never heard of such a thing,” Jia said at a hastily called news conference.

Nevertheless, he said, “No person in Qinghai has been infected by the virus.”

The regional death toll in Asia’s latest bird flu outbreak stands at 54, but no fatalities have been reported in China. Vietnam suffered the most, with 38.

The World Health Organization has warned that bird flu poses a potential threat to humans if it evolves into a virus that can spread from person to person.

Experts fear if the virus mutates to allow easy transmission among humans, it could create a global pandemic, killing millions of people. Recent studies, cited by WHO officials, show the disease would take three months for a possible pandemic to spread around the world.

China initially reported 178 geese found dead in Qinghai Lake, a major transit point for migratory birds, but raised the toll this week to 519. Jia did not explain why the number increased.

Health experts worry that avian flu could be spread by birds that cross Asia from Siberia through China and Southeast Asia to New Zealand and India.