The FAO's senior technical adviser on bird flu in China, Vincent Martin, said Chinese authorities on Thursday reported to the agency the findings of extensive testing in the seven provinces.

"The Ministry of Agriculture in China has been extremely pro-active in investigating the situation in domestic poultry in provinces where these cases have occurred," Martin said.

"So far, despite a large number of samples from poultry being collected and laboratory tested, no evidence of infection in poultry has been found to explain these human cases."

Before meeting with Chinese agriculture ministry officials, Martin raised concerns about bird flu possibly circulating among poultry and said he was waiting for authorities to report the findings of their investigations to him.

The state-run China Daily newspaper also reported on Friday the agriculture ministry confirmed there had been no outbreaks of bird flu among poultry in China this year.

Eight people contracted the H5N1 bird flu virus in China this year -- five of whom died -- compared with just three cases in all of 2008.

A 29-year-old man who was infected last month in southwest Guizhou province was released from hospital Friday after more than three weeks of treatment, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The man, surnamed Zhou, has been in a stable condition for a few days and no longer has any symptoms of bird flu, Xinhua quoted local hospital chief Sun Zhaolin as saying.

Zhou was hospitalised on January 15 after buying and killing a duck from a local market, the report said. He tested positive for bird flu 10 days later.

Earlier this week, a three-year-old girl in northern China was discharged from hospital, becoming the youngest person in the nation to survive bird flu, authorities said. A 21-year-old woman in central Hunan is still being treated.

A total of 25 people have died from avian influenza in China since the disease re-emerged in 2003, according to World Health Organisation figures.

earlier related report
Hong Kong reserve closed amid bird flu tests
A Hong Kong bird sanctuary has been closed for three weeks after a dead grey heron found there tested positive for the H5 bird flu virus, authorities said Friday.

The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said further tests would determine if it was the deadly H5N1 strain, but that the Mai Po reserve would be closed to visitors as a precautionary measure.

"We will monitor the situation closely and review the closure period as necessary," a departmental spokeswoman added.

The reserve is located in the northwestern corner of Hong Kong and has been known as a haven for migratory birds for decades.

The department said it inspected a chicken farm near the reserve but found no abnormal mortality or symptoms of avian influenza.

The carcasses of a bird and a chicken found in different locations in the city two days ago were also found to have the H5 virus and are being examined further.

The department said earlier it had found the H5N1 strain in four other dead birds collected from Lantau island since January 29.

Around 250 people have died of the human form of avian flu since 2003, the World Health Organisation says.

Most had close contact with sick birds, but scientists fear the virus could one day mutate into a form that would spready rapidly among humans, causing a pandemic.

In December, authorities found H5N1 in a chicken at a poultry farm in Hong Kong, prompting the slaughter of more than 90,000 chickens.

Hong Kong was the scene of the world's first reported major H5N1 bird flu outbreak among humans in 1997, when six people died.

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Epidemics on Earth - Bird Flu, HIV/AIDS, Ebola

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