A 5-year-old boy in central Vietnam has been infected by the bird flu virus which has killed 47 people in Asia, the Saigon Giai Phong newspaper reported on Friday. Doctors could not immediately be reached for comment on the boy, the 25th human case of bird flu infection in Vietnam since December. Thirteen of them have died. On Thursday, Phan Nhu The, director of the general hospital in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue told Reuters poultry in the boy's village in the nearby province of Quang Binh had been infected by the H5N1 virus. He was taken to hospital early this week with damage to his lungs. His 13-year-old sister had died, but she had not been tested for bird flu, The said. Since December, when the H5N1 virus broke out anew in the Mekong Delta, 35 of Vietnam's 64 provinces have been affected. In addition to the 13 Vietnamese, one Cambodian has died of it. However, the World Health Organization says it has seen no evidence so far to suggest the virus is changing into a form that could be transmitted easily from one human to another, the greatest fear of experts.
If it did acquire the ability to pass easily from person to person, the virus could set off a pandemic in a world population with no immunity to it and millions could die, the WHO says. It has killed 34 Vietnamese, 12 Thais and the Cambodian and has recurred several times despite the slaughter of millions of poultry since spreading across large parts of Asia in late 2003.
Easy human-to-human transmission is only a matter of time, according to epidemologists.