VOA - Anh ngữ đặc biệt: China -- Bird Flu (VOA)

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From VOA Learning English, this is the Health Report. A World Health Organization official says a new form of avian influenza is unusually dangerous for people. Keiji Fukuda is the WHO's assistant director-general for health security and environment. He spoke to reporters in Beijing recently about the H7N9 bird flu virus. As of late April the virus had killed more than 20 people on the Chinese mainland. The country had recorded more than 120 cases of the disease. The WHO sent a team of specialists to China to learn more about the H7N9 virus. Dr. Fukuda said there is still not enough evidence to show it can spread easily from person to person.

He said evidence suggests that the virus is more easily transmitted from birds to humans that the last version of the virus, H5N1. That strain first appeared in 2003. Over the past 10 years, it spread from Asia to other areas. It has killed more than half of the 622 people it has infected. WHO and Chinese officials say the effort to understand the new virus is still at the beginning. Chinese and WHO scientists say birds infected by the H7N9 virus are the likely causes of human infection. Most of these birds are poultry, like chickens. The majority of deaths and infections from the virus have been reported in Shanghai. Officials there and in other cities have closed down markets where live poultry is sold. Chinese officials say more than half of those infected have been individuals who had direct contact with poultry or other birds. How the other people became infected with the virus is unclear. The government has carried out thousands of tests on birds, but only a small percentage were infected.