A farmer aged 37 of east China's Anhui Province has contracted the H5N1 strain of bird flu. This is the first human case reported on the Chinese mainland this winter.

The man, surnamed Li, developed symptoms of fever and pneumonia last month and was discharged from hospital on Saturday in Tunxi, Anhui, the Ministry of Health said yesterday.

Local health authorities said those who had close contact with Li showed no abnormal symptoms and had been released from medical observation. No bird flu cases were reported among animals in the area but the local authorities are closely monitoring the situation, the ministry said.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Monday that Li tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain. The next day the Anhui provincial health department reported the case to the Ministry of Health. They've given details to the World Health Organization.

Information has also been given to the health agencies in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and a number of other countries, said the ministry.

The virus has killed 14 people on the Chinese mainland since 2003 and 21 contracted the virus before this latest case. The last case was reported in Xinjiang in July 2006.

In Asia the virus killed a 14-year-old boy on the outskirts of Jakarta. This is the country's first fatality in six weeks. The boy died four days after being admitted to hospital with flu-like symptoms.

Indonesia is the world's hardest-hit country with 58 bird flu deaths. In Vietnam the virus has been confirmed in a fourth Vietnamese province after tests on 70 ducks showed they had died from H5N1, a government report said yesterday.

In Beijing a spokesman for the Ministry of Health told a regular news conference yesterday that health authorities would continue to strengthen monitoring cases of pneumonia and flu as "winter is the season that bird flu cases will possibly occur."

Bird flu cases mostly have pneumonia symptoms but colds or influenza would have obvious signs of upper respiratory tract infection, said the spokesman. The discovery of the bird flu case in Anhui proved China's monitoring was efficient and the current influenza outbreak in Beijing had nothing to do with bird flu, he said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by flu this month but it's expected that the numbers will drop soon. The December-January period is when influenza cases hit a peak in North China.

Tianjin municipality and Jilin, Heilongjiang, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces have also witnessed high incidence of influenza.

(China Daily January 11, 2007)