China鈥檚 lack of transparency over its handling of bird flu is making it difficult to determine how the deadly virus is mutating and spreading, a leading World Health Organization official said on Friday.
鈥淭he situation in China is quite confusing and there is some conflicting information,鈥� said Julie Hall, the WHO鈥檚 coordinator of epidemic alert and response in China. 鈥淲e really don鈥檛 know how many strains of bird flu there are in China because we have limited amounts of information shared with us by the Ministry of Agriculture and the virus samples we have asked for have not been shared.鈥�
Hall鈥檚 criticisms come the day China rejected claims by scientists that a new strain of the virus 鈥� dubbed the 鈥淔ujian-like鈥� strain 鈥� has emerged and is spreading rapidly through southern China and neighbouring countries (see New strain of H5N1 bird flu emerges in China).
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China鈥檚 Ministry of Agriculture said the findings, contained in a report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 鈥渄id not completely conform with facts鈥� and there was no evidence of major changes to the virus since 2004.
鈥淯p to now, the bird flu viruses selected from the south share a high uniformity,鈥� agreed Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. 鈥淭here has been no marked change in the biological characteristics of the organisms.鈥�
Dominant strain
Viruses are always mutating and changing with every new generation and new strains and substrains are always appearing, Hall says. What is crucial is to try to understand which strains are becoming dominant and the data indicates that the Fujian strain is becoming dominant, she adds.
鈥淚t鈥檚 our understanding that there have certainly been changes in the virus and continual evolution in the virus since 2004 and the viruses that we requested from 2005 have still not been shared with WHO,鈥� Hall says. This is vital in order to be able to keep abreast of changes, however minute, to better understand how the virus is developing, she said.
The WHO would like to see the 鈥渉undreds, if not thousands of [bird flu] gene sequences鈥� uploaded by the Ministry of Agriculture onto a public data base, Hall said.
Such information is crucial in developing new vaccines for animals and humans, as well as bird flu diagnostic tests and other epidemic controls, she said. 鈥淲e need to clear up the picture and for this the sharing of information is vital,鈥� Hall says.
A dominant strain of the bird flu virus could be an indication that it was becoming resistant to vaccines given to poultry. China vaccinated up to 8.2 billion poultry from January 2006 to September 2006. It has battled dozens of outbreaks in birds, and suffered at least 21 human cases, including 14 deaths.
