Father and son cleared of bird flu: Ministry of Health

Father and son cleared of bird flu: Ministry of Health

Agencies, Jakarta

Initial tests for avian influenza viruses on samples taken from a father and son have proved negative, the Ministry of Health says.

The results of the tests returned on Thursday show the 63-year-old man and his son, 22, who were hospitalized in the capital with flu-like symptoms, do not have bird flu, ministry official Hariyadi Wibisono said on Friday.

"The pneumonia they are suffering from was not caused by bird flu," Hariyadi told AFP, adding that further tests would still be carried out in Hong Kong to confirm the results.

Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari said on Thursday that the pair were the third cluster of related people suspected of having contracted bird flu since the first case was found in Indonesia in June. This raised concern over the possibility that the virus was mutating that could spread between humans.

A father and his two daughters died in the first case. In the second, a woman died but her nephew survived and has since been declared free from the virus.

Results of tests on an infant unrelated to the pair who was also admitted to hospital on Thursday were not yet available.

Indonesia has confirmed three deaths from bird flu.

At least six more people have died of suspected cases of the deadly H5N1 virus, but they are not officially listed as bird flu victims.

Indonesia has another two confirmed bird flu patients who are still alive, while there have been more than 85 suspected cases. At least 60 people have died from bird flu in the Southeast Asia region since 2003, the majority of them in Vietnam.

The WHO fears the current H5N1 virus may mutate, acquiring genes from the human influenza virus that would make it highly infectious as well as lethal -- possibly killing millions worldwide like the influenza pandemic of 1918.

Meanwhile, a WHO official said that the possible cases of bird flu among family members in Indonesia did not mean the deadly virus was mutating, but could be caused by close contact normal in families.

"It doesn't mean mutation," Georg Petersen, WHO's Indonesia representative, told Reuters in a telephone interview on Friday.

"What we know is that from one clear case in Thailand -- and probably in other cases -- there has been close family contact and this is why it could have gone from one person to another," Petersen said.

"It's not what we call extensive human-to-human transmission ... It doesn't mean mutation."

In Thailand, a mother was killed by the virus last year after cradling her dying daughter all night.