Shanghai Daily/Xinhua

Bird flu outbreaks were confirmed in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and in Hunan Province, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday.
Only three human cases have been reported - two deaths and one recovery.
About 290 fowl died at a farm in Shanshan County in Xinjiang on November 22, the ministry said. Regional veterinary authority confirmed it was the deadly H5N1 strain three days later.
In Hunan Province on November 18, a village in Yongzhou city reported that 402 poultry died, and provincial authorities confirmed an outbreak of  bird flu on November 25.
The state bird flu lab confirmed the two outbreaks yesterday.
Authorities have culled about 52,000 birds within 3 kilometers of the Shanshan farm and 13,500 within 3 kilometers of the Yongzhou outbreak.
Meantime, the World Health Organization yesterday started investigating two bird flu deaths in Anhui Province. Both victims, women farmers, were in contact with sick and dead poultry.
Studies show the H5N1 strain of virus separated from China's human cases of bird flu has mutated, compared with the strain found in Vietnam's human cases, said the health ministry yesterday.
Lab tests found the H5N1 strain of virus separated from recent human cases is highly homologous with that found in poultry samples from the bird flu in outbreak sites, said the ministry.
However, compared with the virus strain from the human cases in Vietnam, the genetic order of H5N1 in China's human cases has mutated "to a certain degree," the health ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an said.
"But the mutation cannot cause human-to-human transmission of the bird flu," he said.
Mao said since the H5N1 bird flu first broke out in 1997, most human cases have been reported in Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Chinese mainland. No human case has been found in Europe so far.
The major channels of human infection involve direct contact with infected poultry or their secretions and excretion.