Bird flu mutation 'does not increase risk'

A World Health Organisation investigation showed that the H5N1 virus mutated slightly in an Indonesian family cluster on Sumatra island, but bird flu experts today insisted it did not increase the possibility of a human pandemic.

The 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-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 raise alarm bells.

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