Man in southwest China dies of bird flu, becoming country's 19th H5N1 fatality

A 41-year-old man has died of bird flu in southwest China, the Health Ministry said, marking the country's 19th fatality from the H5N1 virus and its second this year.

The man, surnamed Liang, died of the H5N1 virus strain Wednesday in the Guangxi region, the ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site.

The World Health Organization's Beijing office Friday confirmed the death. The man fell ill Feb. 12 and was admitted to a hospital two days later, the ministry said.

The WHO has now recorded 19 deaths in China from the H5N1 strain since it started ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in late 2003.

China's official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday that a 22-year-old man died of bird flu in January in the central Hunan province. The WHO also confirmed that death.

Both cases this year occurred in regions hit by unusually harsh snow storms that wrecked thousands of acres (hectares) of crops and killed 69 million farm animals.

Hans Troedsson, WHO's representative in China, said Friday that respiratory diseases are more easily transmitted in colder weather but added that two cases were too few to cause concern.

"I don't see any alarming trend, and I am not surprised to see these isolated cases. What would worry me is if we start to see large clusters of cases," Troedsson said.

He said there were no delays in China reporting the deaths to WHO once they were discovered.

In both cases, there was no evidence of human-to-human infection. People who had close contact with the two men who died showed no indication of also catching the virus, Troedsson said.

Bird flu remains hard for humans to catch, but experts worry that the virus could mutate into a form easily transmitted among humans, potentially igniting a pandemic. Most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds.

Chinese authorities have confirmed that a father and son who were sickened with bird flu late last year were the country's first infections within the same family, but said there was still no evidence that the virus has changed into a form that can easily be passed between humans.

The 24-year-old son from the eastern city of Nanjing died Dec. 2.

China has the largest poultry-farming industry in the world. Beijing has vowed to aggressively fight the H5N1 virus, which had killed at least 232 people worldwide, according to WHO.