China: Bird flu kills 2 in Shanghai
Chickens at a farm under quarantine in Jalisco state on July 4, 2012, days after Mexico declared a national animal emergency.
Two Chinese men have died of bird flu in Shanghai after contracting a strain of the disease not previously seen in humans.
Both men, aged 27 and 87, became ill with the H7N9 strain in February and died in March.
A third person — a 35-year-old woman — also caught the virus while in Chuzhou, in the eastern province of Anhui. She is said to be critically ill.
More from GlobalPost: Seventh person dies from bird flu in Cambodia since start of 2013
It is not known how the strain has spread, but the three people who contracted it did not infect each other or anyone else.
All three cases were confirmed by experts from the National Health and Family Planning Commission. They showed symptoms of fever and cough that later developed into pneumonia.
The World Health Organization is "closely monitoring the situation" in China.
"There is apparently no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and transmission of the virus appears to be inefficient, therefore the risk to public health would appear to be low," regional agency spokesman Timothy O'Leary said.
The H7N9 strain of bird flu is thought of as low pathogenic and not easily contracted by humans. The majority of human deaths from bird flu are from H5N1, which killed poultry across Asia in 2003.
There is no vaccine against the H7N9 strain, but the NHFPC is currently testing to assess its ability to infect humans.
Every day, reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you human-centered news from across the globe. But we can’t do it without you. We need your support to ensure we can continue this work for another year.
Make a gift today, and you’ll help us unlock a matching gift of $67,000!