A bus driver in southern China died on Saturday, December 31, after testing positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus. Health authorities said it was the nation’s first reported human case of the deadly disease in 18 months.

The 39-year-old man died of multiple organ failure in the early afternoon after developing symptoms on December 21. China’s official Xinhua news agency reported he had no direct contact with poultry in the month leading up to his death and had not left his home city Shenzhen.

The city of more than 10 million people is in the Guangdong province bordering Hong Kong, where more than 19,000 birds have been slaughtered after three tested positive for the avian influenza virus in mid-December.

The Guangdong health department said 120 people who had close contact with the man have not developed any signs of contraction.the precise source of the disease, however, remains unknown.

“So far, we have not received any reports of any birds being infected,” an official at the Shenzhen agriculture and fisheries bureau said on Saturday. “We will not make any plans to kill domestic birds unless we know that was the source, or if there is any sign of birds being infected.”

High death toll

The H5N1 virus rarely infects humans and is usually only contracted by people in close contact with poultry, yet the disease has proved fatal in about 60 percent of cases. the World Health Organization claim that of 573 confirmed cases, 336 people have died since 2003.

With the world’s largest poultry population, China is considered one of the nations most at risk of a bird flu epidemic. the country’s last reported human case was in June 2010 when a pregnant 22-year-old woman died after being exposed to sick and dead poultry.

Author: Charlotte Chelsom-Pill (AFP, Reuters, AP)Editor: Toma Tasovac