Following pressure from world health bodies China on Friday to provide information on the death of a 12-year-old girl, Chinese officials now say the child died of pneumonia.
She was initially suspected of contracting deadly bird flu.
World Health Organization (WHO) spokeswoman Fadela Chaib, says that after the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic they know they must provide timely information about what is going on.
In 2002 China was accused of not disclosing the extent of an outbreak of SARS in the south of the country, which resulted in its eventual spread to 8,000 people around the world, 800 of whom died.
According to the WHO, the H5N1 strain of bird flu is far more lethal than SARS, and while SARS had a mortality rate of around 15 percent, H5N1, which has now spread from Asia to Europe, kills up to a third of people it infects.
Since last week China has revealed three outbreaks of the H5N1 virus that killed 3,800 chickens, ducks and geese.
But according to another WHO spokeswoman, Maria Cheng, Chinese officials as yet have not provided any information on the death of the 12-year-old girl on October 17 in southern Hunan province, the site of China's latest bird flu outbreak.
The girl's 9-year-old brother is also reported to be in a stable condition in hospital with pneumonia.
Cheng says more clarification is needed because both apparently had been exposed to sick chickens.
Apparently some Chinese media reports have said the girl's body was cremated and it is unclear what samples were taken.
However a Chinese Health Ministry official, Chen Xianyi, says the girl and her brother had contracted pneumonia, and there have been no cases of human infection of H5N1.
China has reported no human bird flu infections since the latest H5N1 outbreak first surfaced in Asia in late 2003, while 62 people have died in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia and the virus has spread to Europe's eastern border.
As farmers in China, as in many parts of Asia, live alongside their poultry and other livestock, which increases the risk of the disease spreading to humans, many experts are suspicious of the Chinese assurances.
It also raises the chance of the virus mutating into a form that could spread easily among people, triggering a pandemic, and millions could die.
Last week WHO issued its first public risk assessment of the consequences of bird flu spreading to Africa, warning that the virus would push "fragile health systems close to the brink of collapse".
It is believed migratory birds play a active role in the transmission of H5N1 to domestic flocks, and many are now heading south for Africa from Siberia, where outbreaks among poultry have occurred.
WHO says that in Africa, as in parts of Asia, many households keep backyard flocks, which often mingle freely with wild birds or share play areas with children.