China agreed on Friday to share long-sought bird flu virus samples with international health authorities, after rejecting scientists' findings that a new, vaccine-resistant strain was circulating in the country.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said 20 virus samples were being sent to the US Center for Disease Control, a WHO collaborating centre, raising hopes of a better understanding of how the H5N1 bird flu virus is changing. "We are very encouraged by that. They are viruses from 2004 and 2005, and we will make follow-ups for the 2006 samples," Henk Bekedam, the WHO's China representative, told Reuters.
The decision comes after China rejected findings in a paper published last week by Hong Kong and US scientists that said they had detected a new strain of H5N1 in the southern Chinese province of Fujian last year.
Chinese scientists also denied the paper's claims that its vaccines were ineffective against new strains, saying they were continually updating vaccines as the virus changed. "We have developed new vaccines to control those variants," said Chen Hualan, director of China's National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory.
Jia added that China's national bird flu laboratory had been instructed by the Agriculture Ministry to follow any signs of mutation, amid fears the virus could change into a form that can pass easily between people, leading to a potential pandemic. He also attacked the methodology and ethics of Guan Yi, one of the paper's authors.