Vietnam says latest human case of bird flu recovering well
HANOI - A 15-year-old boy in the northern Vietnamese port city of Haiphong has tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus but is on the road to recovery.
"He is positive to the H5N1 virus, but has been cured," health ministry spokesman Tran Duc Long said Thursday.
The boy, the latest person in Vietnam to test positive for the virus, was on the road to recovery.
On Wednesday, he had said the boy had tested positive for the H5 part of the virus and that further tests were being made.
Medical experts have previously said the only strain of the H5 virus that has been found in people here so far is the H5N1.
Haiphong is among 19 cities and provinces hit by avian influenza since the latest outbreaks among poultry began in early October. Since then, more than one million poultry have been culled or died from the virus.
The H5N1 strain of the virus has ravaged poultry and killed more than 60 people across Asia, 42 of them in Vietnam.
The communist nation has identified in total 93 human cases of the disease since late 2003, according to Vietnamese official figures.
Agence France Presse - November 24, 2005.
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