CHINA: China's chief vet rejects new bird flu strain report

China's chief veterinarian on Friday (November 10) sharply rejected claims that a new, vaccine-resistant bird flu strain had been found in the country and slammed the research paper's science as inauthentic. Hong Kong and U.S. scientists published a paper last week saying they had detected the new strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus in the southern Chinese province of Fujian last year. "In fact, there is no such new "Fujian like" virus variant at all. It is utterly groundless to assert that the outbreak of bird flu in Southeast Asian countries was caused by AI in China and there would be a new outbreak wave in the world. The data cited in the article were inauthentic and the research methodology was not based on science," Jia Youling, China's chief veterinary officer, told a news conference. 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. Jia attacked the methodology of Guan Yi, one of the virologists responsible for the paper, saying the Fujian-like strain, which Guan said had emerged since March 2005, was actually the same as bird flu viruses found in two Hunan counties in February 2004 in terms of genetic sequencing. "Their arguments are not tenable and are totally against the facts. International organizations FAO and WHO, share similar views with China on this article. However, Guan Yi's article did mislead some countries and regions," said Jia. Jia also claimed that the misuse of China's bird flu samples by foreign scientific studies had occurred before. "After we offered five samples in the year 2004. Four of five were misused twice by foreign scientific research organisations. This violated our intellectual property," said Jia. In the first 10 months of the year, there were 10 confirmed poultry outbreaks in seven provinces, Jia said, but added that 95 percent of domesticated birds had been vaccinated. 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.

ITN Source | November 10, 2006

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