All Provincial Regions In China Can Test For H7N9

NIAM SEET WEI BEIJING (China), April 12 (Bernama) -- China has enabled all influenza network laboratories in its 31 provincial regions to conduct tests for the H7N9 bird flu virus, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC). The move was to speed up the tests for a better control of H7N9 bird flu, said the director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDCP), Wang Yu. To date, a total of 160,000 samples of test reagents had been sent to all the laboratories, the state-run news agency Xinhua quoted Wang as saying. Wang said that CCDCP's next step of would be strengthening the monitoring of key regions, including those areas where no H7N9 cases was reported yet. The CCDCP would focus on changes in the virus, such as its drug resistance and variations of its gene sequences, in a bid to find the variation that can lead to human-to-human transmission, Wang said. As of Thursday, death toll from the H7N9 bird flu virus has reached 10 in China when another patient infected with the virus died, while the number of infected patients rose to 38. -- BERNAMA