China reports two new cases of bird flu, one dead

A woman in eastern China has died and a two year-old girl is critically ill in northern China after becoming infected with bird flu, state media said on Sunday.
The 27-year-old woman from Jinan, capital of China's Shandong province, died on Saturday after falling ill on January 5, Xinhua said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial health department. It gave her surname as Zhang.
The two-year-old girl, surnamed Peng, was found ill on January 7 in central Hunan Province and taken to a hospital in her home province of Shanxi on January 11, Xinhua news agency said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial health department. After not reporting a single human infection in almost a year, China has now confirmed three cases in two weeks.
Health authorities said earlier this month a woman infected with bird flu had died in Beijing after buying ducks at a market in Hebei province, which surrounds the Chinese capital, sparking emergency checks of local poultry markets.