Bird flu toll hits 70

A Thai boy has become the 70th person to die of bird flu, authorities said yesterday, as reports warned a flu pandemic could cost the US economy hundreds of billions of dollars as well as millions of lives.

China has also reported a new case of H5N1, the fifth person in the country known to have been infected with the deadly virus.

The 31-year-old woman farmer, who lived in Heishan county of Liaoning province, has since recovered.

Chinese officials were accused of concealing bird flu outbreaks in several provinces for many months this year, according to comments from a leading virologist in Hong Kong published in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper yesterday.

The death of the five-year-old boy from the central province of Nakhon Nayok, 110 kilometres from Bangkok, took Thailand's bird flu death toll to 14 out of 22 known cases since the virus swept through large parts of Asia in late 2003.

It was not certain how the boy caught the virus, which usually strikes those in close contact with infected fowl or their droppings.

The boy, who died in hospital on Wednesday, was not known to have had direct contact with chickens. "We believe that the boy contracted the virus from his surroundings because, although his family does not raise chickens, there are chickens raised in his neighbourhood," said Thawat Suntrajarn, head of the Health Ministry's Disease Control Department. That would follow the usual pattern of human infections of the virus, which has not yet shown signs of evolving into a form which could pass easily from person to person.

Experts say that is the great fear. If the H5N1 virus did acquire that ability, it could set off a pandemic which could kill millions of people without immunity to the new strain.

The virus is now endemic in poultry in parts of Asia and countries around the world are preparing plans to deal with a pandemic that could cause massive economic losses.

China has reported more than 30 outbreaks of bird flu and two deaths among cases where the virus has spread to humans.

Beijing has promised resources and openness in fighting bird flu after being widely criticised for an initial cover-up of the SARS virus in 2003.

But Guan Yi of the University of Hong Kong, one of the world's leading experts on the subject, told the Globe and Mail newspaper that bird flu was "out of control in China".

"Quite honestly, some provinces have the virus and they still haven't announced any outbreak. I can show direct evidence, even though China is still trying very hard to block my research," the newspaper quoted him as saying.