First New Bird Flu Infection Confirmed In Beijing: Deadly H7N9 Virus Spreading?

In what's quickly growing into a national concern in China, a deadly new form of bird flu has spread to Beijing, with a 7-year-old girl contracting the infection earlier in the week, China's health ministry confirmed Saturday.

The recently infected girl, whose last name is Yao, is the first known case of bird flu in the country's capital. She is currently being monitored by doctors at a local hospital and is in stable condition, Beijing's health bureau said. Yao's parents both sell poultry for a living in the Shunyi district of Beijing. Officials said that two people who have had "close contact" with the girl have not yet exhibited signs of infection.

Until this week, no one beyond the nation's eastern region around Shanghai had been infected with the new H7N9 variant of bird flu. The newly confirmed infection in Beijing brings the overall total of those stricken with bird flu in China to 44 people. Chinese health officials reported another five new instances of infection Friday. Of those infected with the H7N9 strand, 11 have died so far. Authorities say the cause of the new breakout of bird flu remains unclear.

China's health ministry and the World Health Organization are currently focusing their investigations into H7N9 on the country's poultry markets. Numerous towns in China's east have already ceased trading live poultry in an attempt to stop the infection from spreading.

The new strain of bird flu causes intense illness in the majority of those infected, which has lead some across China to panic, anxious that the virus may evolve to spread easily and could transform into a "deadly influenza pandemic." To assuage Chinese citizens worried about H7N9, the WHO made a formal announcement Friday that there is no reason to believe the new form of bird flu is in a state of "ongoing human-to-human transmission."

"The Chinese government is actively investigating this event and has heightened disease surveillance," the WHO said.

The new H7N9 bird flu virus, which had only affected pigeons in the past, was first found in humans beginning in late March.