China admits first bird flu case dates from 2003
August 8th, 2006
On June 22nd eight reputed Chinese scientists published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine, attempting to prove that a 24-year-old man who became ill and later died in November 2003, was actually a bird flu victim, and not a SARS one, as authorities had claimed at the time. The Chinese Ministry of Health has now confirmed these suspicions, after the case was analyzed by parallel laboratory tests. These were carried out by Chinese health officials in cooperation with scientists from the World Health Organization. This only adds to the suspicion that the country had tried to cover up its bird flu cases, attributing some of them to the SARS disease.