(AFP/China Daily)
Updated: 2005-11-18 07:12

However the ministry said He's brother, He Junyao, nine, was infected with bird flu. The boy has since recovered and was discharged from hospital last week.

Health workers spray disinfectant in a drill against bird flu in Rizhao, East China's Shandong Province November 17, 2005. China Thursday reported two new outbreaks, one in Hubei Province and the other in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. [Xinhua]

Health authorities said the siblings fell ill shortly after eating a chicken that had died suddenly.

The WHO, which sent an investigation team to the family's village, confirmed the findings and said more human cases were likely in China, although not a huge number.

"That's always of course possible...as long as there are poultry outbreaks, people will be exposed to the virus. You can expect that people might get infected," WHO's China head, Henk Bekedam, told reporters in Beijing.

"On the other hand, I would like to stress...the current virus is not easily transmittable to humans. We don't expect a large number of cases."

Other cases of H5N1 crossing from birds into humans in China were also being investigated on Thursday.

In northeastern Liaoning province, a poultry farmer who had contracted pneumonia after coming into contact with dead chickens was being investigated despite initially testing negative for the virus and making a recovery.

Confirmation of human infections and fatalities in the world's most populous nation has raised the stakes for Chinese and global health authorities in battling the virus.

More than 60 people have already died of the H5N1 strain in Southeast Asia since 2003, with most of the deaths in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia.

Although human-to-human transmission has not yet been proved, scientists warn that continued contact between infected birds and humans might result in the virus mutating into a form that could be easily passed on between people.

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