Ministry warns about risk of H7N9 virus spread   A customer carries a chicken bought from a poultry market in Kunming, Yunnan province, China January 23, 2009. Reuters/Stringer/Files As the H7N9 avian influenza virus that has killed 60 people in China has spread to areas near Vietnam, the Vietnamese health authorities have warned that Vietnam is facing the spread of the avian flu both in poultry and humans. By February 4, the H7N9 flu virus had affected 286 people in China and killed 60 of them, said Tran Duc Phu, head of the Vietnamese Ministry of Health’s Preventive Health Department According to epidemic investigations, about 70 percent of the deceased had contacted poultry, Phu said. Some poultry samples tested positive for the H7N9 virus in the Chinese province of Guang Xi, which borders Vietnam’s Lang Son Province through a borderline of 253 km, Phu said. Meanwhile, the number of people contracting the virus has also increased in Hong Kong, he added. In face of such a situation, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the two Vietnamese ministries of Health, and Agriculture and Rural Development have issued a joint communiqué about the epidemic, confirming that the risk of infection in both humans and poultry is on the rise. WHO has recommended that people avoid traveling to any areas where the H7N9 bird flu is raging. Regarding the possible spread of the H7N9 bird flu from China into Vietnam, Phu said, “The epidemic can penetrate into Vietnam at any time since there are a large volume of people and goods, including poultry, that travel between the two countries at their border everyday.” Meanwhile, the trade of poultry between the two countries via their border has not been controlled well, he said. In related developments, the total number of suspected cases of avian influenza reported in South Korea by February 3 was 77. An H5N8 strain of bird flu has been confirmed in 40 of these cases, up from 27 on February 1, the South Korean health authorities reported. Health officials here have said the H5N8 strain of bird flu poses no immediate threats to humans. They added that no human infection of the strain was reported so far. TUOITRENEWS