Mutated bird flu virus ‘nothing remarkable’

A WORLD Health Organisation investigation has found that the deadly bird flu virus has mutated slightly in an Indonesian family cluster on Sumatra island.

However, bird flu experts insisted it did not increase the possibility of a human pandemic.

The H5N1 virus that infected eight members of a family last month – killing seven of them – appears to have slightly mutated in a 10-year-old boy, who was then suspected of passing the virus to his father, the report said.

It is the first evidence of possible human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus, said Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, adding that the virus did not pass outside the cluster and died with the father.

“Then it stopped. It was dead end at that point,” he said, stressing that viruses were always slightly changing and there was no reason to be alarmed.

“Analysis of the viruses suggest that there is nothing remarkable about these viruses compared to other human H5N1 viruses,” he said.

Malik Peiris, a leading H5N1 expert from Hong Kong, told reporters in Jakarta that it was common for the influenza virus to mutate.

Indonesian and WHO officials closely monitored more than 50 contacts of the victims in the northern Sumatra case, keeping them in voluntary home quarantine for several weeks following the outbreak, but none developed symptoms.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has spread rapidly out of eastern Asia in recent months. It almost exclusively infects birds but has killed 130 people since 2003, mostly in Asia.

Experts believe it poses the greatest threat of a global epidemic of flu that could kill millions, if it acquires the ability to pass easily from human to human.