New H5N1 strain in China not posing new dangers

HONG KONG, Nov 3 (Reuters) A new strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus has not shown any significant mutation that would enable it to spread easily among people, the World Health Organisation said.

But the UN health body expressed disappointment with Chinese agriculture officials, and urged them to share samples in a timely fashion so potential vaccines could be prepared.

Researchers in Hong Kong and the US said in a report released this week the ''Fujian-like strain'', first detected in China's southern Fujian province in March 2005, had increasingly been found in six provinces, displacing other H5N1 strains.

While vaccines now used in poultry in China can neutralise most H5N1 strains, the Fujian variant evades them, making it ''predominant''. The report added it may have started a third wave of outbreaks in parts of Southeast Asia and could spread further.

''It doesn't appear at this stage to be more transmissible to humans. Based on the information that was shared, there were no significant changes that would indicate increased transmissibility or increased pandemic risk,'' said Julie Hall, the WHO's bird flu coordinator in Beijing.

Hall said China's Ministry of Health had analysed six human H5N1 samples and identified them as the ''Fujian-like virus''.

''It shared the sequence data with the WHO in addition to sharing the six samples themselves,'' Hall said, adding that one of the samples had since been selected as a seed virus for the making of a prototype vaccine.

Hall said while China's health ministry had been forthcoming with information, the country's Ministry of Agriculture had not shared any samples since 2004. The country has battled dozens of H5N1 outbreaks in birds in the last two years.

The international health community ripped China three years ago for covering up the extent of SARS outbreaks in the country.

''What we are urging the MOA to do is share the information they have on a regular and timely basis with WHO, so that when strains become permanent, we know sooner than later,'' Hall said.

There have been 21 human H5N1 infections in China since late 2003, including 14 deaths, but most occurred in places with no reported outbreaks of the disease in birds, raising fears that H5N1 outbreaks in animals may be going unnoticed or unreported.

''The thing that is sad and disappointing about this (research) publication is that we in WHO had to wait for human cases to occur before that virus was officially shared with the WHO.

''The MOA has not shared that strain nor has it shared information that we believe the MOA most likely had about the emergence of this dominant strain in China,'' Hall said.

If the WHO was given information by the agriculture ministry, experts could then produce diagnostic test kits and prepare potential vaccines, Hall added.

Beijing dismissed scientific findings on the Fujian-like strain yesterday, saying it had found no evidence of the variant and there was no need to share samples with the WHO.

But the international scientific community is getting fed up and increasingly concerned. For many scientists, the absence of animal outbreaks in places with human infections is illogical.

''Because the virus is widespread, it naturally means it is going to be involved in any human cases that do occur, because there are not very many other types of viruses in the region,'' said Gavin Smith, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong.

''The human isolates are Fujian-like viruses and they are closely related to their avian counterparts, so the sources of infection were likely to have been from infected poultry.'' The WHO has been identifying prevalent H5N1 strains to build a library of prototype vaccines, so that they are ready for use in case any of these strains trigger a flu pandemic.

Although the H5N1 remains a bird disease, it has killed more than 150 people since late 2003 and experts fear it may trigger a pandemic if it becomes easy to transmit among people.

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