China Finally Admits to First Case of Bird Flu

China admitted yesterday that its first human case of bird flu occurred two years earlier than previously reported - a disclosure that rewrites the history of the disease and raises questions about Beijing's willingness to share information about the epidemic.

A 24-year-old soldier identified only by his surname, Shi, died of the H5N1 virus at a military hospital in Beijing in November 2003, the health ministry said on its website. The statement confirmed claims made in June by eight Chinese researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The government blamed the long delay in reporting the case on confusion about the causes of the man's illness. After treatment for pneumonia failed, Shi was tested for severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which shares many symptoms with avian flu.

It was only in February 2004 during an outbreak of avian flu that researchers took Shi's samples out of the freezer and checked them for the H5N1 virus. The ministry said it had taken more than a year for the results to be confirmed. In other countries diagnosis takes days or weeks.

The World Health Organisation said Shi was the first confirmed fatality from a new strain of the disease that has killed at least 135 people, most of them in Vietnam and Thailand. China had claimed its first human case occurred in November 2005. Since then it has reported 19 cases, 12 of them fatal.

Julie Hall, the coordinator of WHO China's epidemic and alert response team, said Shi's case showed how the virus had mutated from an earlier strain. "This helps us to understand how the disease has evolved," she said.

The Chinese health ministry has invited the WHO to help retest the samples. Dr Hall said she was pleased at the opportunity to cooperate but questioned the delay before disclosure. "This has highlighted a gap in China's reporting system," she said.

Dr Hall called on the ministry to release more information. "The clearer the picture we have globally, the easier it is to see how the virus has been changing, what it might do next and how to respond."