China's top vet rejects new bird flu strain report
Source: Reuters
BEIJING, Nov 10 (Reuters) - China's chief veterinarian on Friday will roundly reject claims a new, vaccine-resistant bird flu strain had been found in the country, and will slam the research paper's science as "unauthentic". Hong Kong and U.S. scientists published a paper last week that said they had detected the new strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus in the southern Chinese province of Fujian last year. "The data cited in the article was inauthentic, and the research methodology was not based on science," Jia Youling, China's chief veterinary officer, will tell a news conference, according to a transcript of his speech. The paper that identified the "Fujian strain", published in the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said it had emerged in China and and may have started outbreaks in Southeast Asia. "In fact, there is no such thing as a new 'Fujian-like' virus variant at all," Jia will say at the conference, which started at 0200 GMT. "It is utterly groundless to assert that the outbreak of bird flu in Southeast Asian countries was caused by avian influenza in China and there would be a new outbreak wave in the world," he will say. He will add that China's national bird flu laboratory has been "organised" by the Agriculture Ministry to follow any signs of mutation. "Vaccines targeting different virus strains have been stocked to deal with any possible mutation," Jia will say. Adding to the confusion, China's Agriculture Ministry has refused to share animal virus samples of H5N1 with the World Health Organisation (WHO), which the WHO says is hampering its understanding of how the virus is changing. The WHO has said the Fujian strain has not shown a heightened danger to humans, but scientists fear bird flu could change into a form that can pass easily between people, potentially causing a pandemic. H5N1 has caused 21 human infections in China since late 2003, including 14 deaths, and with the world's largest poultry population and millions of backyard birds, the country is seen as key to the fight against bird flu.
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