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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Indonesian case raises new bird flu alarms

Jia-Rui Chong Los Angeles Times

Six family members in Indonesia who died of bird flu most likely infected each other with the virus, rather than contracting it from birds, raising the possibility that the virus is becoming more efficient in spreading among humans.

Officials from the World Health Organization stressed that the family members contracted the disease through close contact with each other, and there is no evidence it has the ability to spark a quick spreading pandemic.

But the cluster of deaths in Kubu Sembelang village in North Sumatra still worried officials because it involved a human chain of infection. One person appears to have passed the infection to a second person, who then passed it independently to a third, said WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng.

Previous human-to-human cases of the bird flu have involved only a single link in the chain in which the virus jumps from an infected bird to a human to another human.

The deaths in Indonesia are the largest cluster of human cases since the bird flu outbreak began in 1997.

The WHO said Thursday it was continuing its investigation of the Indonesian deaths and had no immediate plans to raise its pandemic alert level.

So far, 218 people have been infected by and 124 people have died from a strain of bird flu known as H5N1. Most of these cases resulted from close contact between people and birds.