China has confirmed its fourth and fifth human cases of bird flu. A 10-year-old girl tested positive, as did a female farmer.
The 10-year-old girl from southern China has undergone emergency treatment. She's been sick with a fever and pneumonia since last month, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
People who have been in close contact with the girl have not shown any symptoms of the H5N1 strain yet.
No animal outbreaks have been reported in this part of China, and officials are now trying to determine how the girl contracted the virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) said she had contact with domestic poultry one to two weeks before becoming sick.
The fifth human case is a female farmer from the northwestern Liaoning province. Xinhua reports that she lived in an area where there had been an outbreak of bird flu among poultry and had been in contact with dead birds. The woman has since recovered.
Two female poultry workers died from the disease in the eastern Anhui province last month, while a 9-year-old boy survived in the southern Hunan province. His dead sister is a suspected case.
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