Chinese agriculture officials have recently announced that they have found poultry infected with a lethal form of avian influenza. Therefore, they ordered the slaughter of 377,000 chickens. The first such outbreak was reported in mainland China in June. The discovery of the H5N1 form of the bird-flu virus in two areas of Jiangsu province is not the only one in Asia. India, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia have reported recent outbreaks, raising the risk of human infections during the winter.

The agriculture ministry decided to kill chickens and ban the transport of poultry in or out of the affected areas after routine testing showed signs of the H5N1 virus. However, bird flu is mainly a danger to poultry, as it's not so easily transmitted to humans. Just 38 cases of human H5N1 infection, including 29 which led to deaths, have been discovered throughout 2008. Even if these numbers are not so optimistic, they're small compared to the number of people who die annually of regular influenza. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends governments in the affected areas to be on their guard against H5N1, because the virus has the potential to mutate into a more transmissible form and spark a deadly pandemic.

In a similar case, Hong Kong ordered the slaughter of 80,000 chickens after three dead birds tested positive for H5N1. As a safety measure, the authorities announced they would temporarily suspend poultry imports as they are working to determine the source of the infection. In order to explain the emergence of the disease, they said smuggled fertilized chicken eggs from China could have carried it. In Egypt, a 16-year-old girl died of the H5N1 strain on Monday, being the country's 23^rd human fatality.