New bird flu cases in Vietnam leaves four dead

The Ministry of Health in VietNam says there have been five new human bird flu cases of the deadly virus in the country since June this year.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed the bird flu cases, four of which were fatal.

The four deaths included two women in their 20's and two men aged 15 and 20; the deaths all occurred between June 21 and August 3.

A 29 year old man has recovered.

All five cases which had been confirmed earlier by Vietnam-based laboratory tests, were from the country's north and bring the human death toll in the Southeast Asian country to 46 since 2003 out of 100 cases.

The Vietnamese Agriculture Ministry says three of Vietnam's 64 provinces, two in the southern Mekong delta and one in the north, remain on the government's current bird flu watchlist.

This most recent outbreak takes Vietnam's bird flu cases to 7 this year and officials are concerned that the H5N1 virus will surface again in winter which starts in November.

Although the H5N1 virus remains a virus which affects mostly birds, experts continue to fear it could mutate into a form easily transmitted from person to person and spread rapidly across the world, killing millions.

According to the WHO, worldwide the H5N1 virus has killed 199 people out of 327 known cases, and millions of birds have either died from the virus or been slaughtered because of it.